Jezebel
by Drucilla
Summary: Riddick meets a most unusual contender in the underground fighting rings in the Slam. In Revisions.
1. In the Cage

Disclaimer and author's note:  
  
5-12-04: I came back to this bit of fanfiction because of The Chronicles of Riddick (coming soon to a theatre near you!) I actually rather like it, although most of the time when I go back and look at fanfic it's more of a matter of what the hell was I thinking. I can definitely see the points a couple reviewers made; I'm actually revising along those lines because towards the middle I think it just jumped the shark. My only excuse was that I wrote this while I was at work and really, really bored.  
  
There's a lot more information about Riddick available now, and I've made an attempt to splice some of it in without giving too much away for tCoR. Some of it just had to stay, by freakish coincidence. You'll see if you poke around websites or when you see the movie. Some of it got changed to accommodate his backstory. Some of it I just expanded a little. There shouldn't be any spoilers.  
  
I'm planning a sequel fic for this, actually, that ties in both this and my other three Pitch Black fics. Hope you'll find it as interesting to read as I do to write.  
  
As always, Richard B. Riddick = Not Mine. Everyone else = Mine.  
  


* * *

  
  
In Slam City, it wasn't so much that no one could hear you scream. It was that no one cared.  
  
There was nothing but the sick, wet sound of flesh slapping sweat-covered flesh; the grunts of men being brutally punched, kicked, beaten; the labored breathing of men too badly hurt to stand. This was a common theme in the nightly event, as was the blood that spattered the razorwire-topped cage that the men fought in. It was a hideous sport, unworthy even of the gladiatorial rings under Caligula, Tiberius, or Nero. But the prison guards loved it.  
  
Richard B. Riddick watched the carnage with dispassionate, silver eyes.  
  
"There's some big money going around tonight," a voice from behind him said. Riddick didn't bother to turn, because the man hadn't bothered to hide his approach. He didn't care about the ones who walked up openly; it was the people who thought they could sneak up on him that he had to worry about. "New catch of fresh fish just arrived a few hours ago. Apparently there were a couple of bruisers among them; they got dumped into the Cage almost immediately."  
  
"Is that so."  
  
"That is so."  
  
The Cage was one of several places Riddick liked to frequent, some others being The Pit or the Ring. Each of the names went with one of those over- used fighting arenas, and each was managed by a bookie (or a coalition of bookies) who milked the violent population of Slam City for all it was worth. The Cage was, as the name suggested, a fighting cage of wire mesh fencing ten feet high and topped with razorwire. It was normally sixteen feet in diameter, but could be expanded to as much as twenty five feet for large, all-out melee wars such as this one. Onlookers would place their bets on which inmate would be the last man standing in the Cage, and there was usually a brisk business going on during these nights. The Pit and the Ring had no such versatility; their structures were created out of ferrocrete and could not be altered. It was for this reason that the Cage was Riddick's particular favorite of the three; you never knew what you were going to get.  
  
"Any of the new guys doing well? I don't recognize anyone in the ring." Riddick watched the Darwinian bloodbath as he fingered a packet of menthols inside his thigh pocket... he might actually make a bet on this one. Few melee-wars lasted past the first half hour, but this one was going on forty five minutes and counting. It might actually be worth it.  
  
"Well, you see the guy over there who has the blonde ponytail in the headlock? The red-head?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Odds on him jumped from fifty-to-one right up to four-to-one. Took down the first three guys just about by himself."  
  
Riddick arched an eyebrow. "Impressive."  
  
"Very."  
  
He waved over a bookie; the weasel-faced man appeared at his side as if by magic. "Five on the red-head," Riddick said, paying the man. "And don't even think about palming any."  
  
If his reputation as a deadly fighter hadn't dissuaded the bookie from grifting off of Riddick's bet, the expression on his face and the low tones of his voice would have. The bookie nodded, scowled, and disappeared back into the crowd to fleece some other prisoner, someone less deadly and disreputable. The man behind Riddick walked up to stand next to him and smirked. "That wasn't really necessary, you know."  
  
"Yeah, I know, Doc... but it felt pretty good." Riddick smiled. It wasn't a pleasant smile.  
  
In the circle of wire and blood there were three real contenders left. The red-head, who had just choked the breath (and possibly the life) out of Ponytail, a dark-haired buzz-cut man with a bull-dog face that suggested he'd been in fights like this before, and another new guy in a rare prison- uniform hooded sweatshirt. They stood, each to what passed for a corner, watching each other warily. These, then, were the real fighters. They had been saving their energy and sizing each other up, knowing that anyone who had survived the initial scramble was likely to be a serious threat. Riddick actually felt an ounce of respect for these three. They looked intelligent as well as vicious. The crowd died to a low, excited murmur, sensing something coming. When nothing happened, they started to grow impatient. The chant started to rise... "Fight! Fight! Fight!"  
  
Hooded Sweatshirt jerked at the first shout, looking upwards as though he almost expected something to drop out of the sky. Red-head pushed his sweat- matted hair back from his forehead and grinned maniacally; Buzz-Cut only grunted. All three were either too experienced or too clever to respond to the taunting of the crowd, choosing their own times for attack and for holding position. Good enough, especially since it gave all three a chance to get their breath back. It was a waiting game now, waiting to see who would crack first.  
  
Tempers were starting to flare in the crowd, and a few fights broke out there as well, quickly suppressed by other people who actually wanted to see what was going to happen. Red-head leaned down to watch the other two, which Buzz-Cut took as a sign to think about engaging Hooded Sweatshirt. The third one just started to pace quietly. It would have been a stalemate, a three-way tie if the crowd hadn't been baying for blood.  
  
"Fight!! Fight!! Fight!!"  
  
"You think they're going to do it?" Doc murmured to Riddick, who was actually starting to think that this might really be interesting. One clever fighter in a melee was something to watch; he was wondering if these three might not actually strike a truce rather than obey the whims of the masses.  
  
"I'm not sure... if they don't, though, someone's going to make them."  
  
Hooded Sweatshirt kept pacing, looking more agitated. Buzz-Cut grinned and cracked his knuckles, obviously figuring the smaller man for an easy mark. Red just watched them both. It occurred to Riddick that Red might actually get the best of this deal if the other two beat each other up, and he'd probably counted on that. Buzz-Cut started to advance. The roaring of the crowd grew exponentially. "FIGHT!! FIGHT!! FIGHT!!"  
  
Buzz-Cut advanced, starting to charge the other man, one fist held low and tight and close to his body with other hand reaching out to grab the man by the neck. Hooded Sweatshirt watched, most probably with alarm. Buzz-Cut was building up a great deal of torque and momentum with his position and his charge, and it didn't look as though the smaller fighter had his wits about him; on the contrary, it looked as though the waiting had unnerved him to the point of making a mistake.  
  
And then at the last second he spun to the side, slamming Buzz-Cut hard in the kidneys with clenched fists one-two, one-two, three times in rapid succession. Buzz-Cut slammed into the fencing, startled and in pain.  
  
"He's quick," Riddick said, actual admiration in his voice.  
  
"Huh," was all the doctor said.  
  
Buzz-Cut wasn't too slow himself, pushing off the fencing and aiming a fast punch to Hooded Sweatshirt's back and, more specifically, spinal column. Hoody seemed to anticipate this too, though, or maybe he just figured it was what he would have done. Either way, the smaller man slammed a fist up into Buzz-Cut's nose, spraying blood everywhere. Buzz-Cut doubled over, which resulted in a knee being violently applied to his sternum, twice. He staggered back, clearly dazed, audibly wheezing. The crowd was going wild, so loud that if the doctor was saying anything at this point, Riddick couldn't hear it. He watched the man in the hooded sweatshirt move back, bouncing a little on the balls of his feet, hands relaxed at his sides. There was something about the way he moved, like the star fighter in a bad kung-fu action tri-d but at the same time more familiar. Buzz-Cut glared at Hooded Sweatshirt with bitter hatred in his eyes. Hooded Sweatshirt stopped, balancing lightly on his feet as though he were about to take off and fly.  
  
And then Riddick knew.  
  
He leaned forward just as Hooded Sweatshirt leaped, flying with foot extended and snapping Buzz-Cut's sternum with a mighty kick. Red looked up from where he'd been crouching just in time for Buzz-Cut's head to hit his with another audible crack. He went reeling. Buzz-Cut's head jerked once, there was another crack, and then he hit the floor. The audience roared.  
  
Riddick shrugged. Five menthols was a small price to pay for that kind of discovery.  
  
He waited until the fight was over, until most of the crowd had filtered off to one of the other arenas or to the canteen or just to bed. It was pretty late in the so-called evening, after all. There wouldn't be any more fights today, not after that performance. Tradition dictated that the winner of the melee fought the first on the list of the night, and no one wanted to take on the newcomer without seeing what he could do one-on-one first. There were different tactics, different procedures for a one-on-one than for a melee, and a person who survived well in one sort of fight might not fight well in the other. But no one was willing to take the chance with the small fighter who might be clever as well as quick and strong. No one wanted to be the next person to lose to the newcomer and suffer the resultant drop in status. Not after that performance.  
  
The bookies made the rounds (Riddick's smirked at him as he went past), collecting money and cigarettes and other trade goods and making out the rare payment to some lucky winner. From what it looked like very few people had actually bet on the sweatshirt kid, and most of those had probably been towards the very end. That made the mysterious fighter all the more impressive, and dangerous. Riddick had a healthy respect for people he found both impressive and dangerous. It was a short list.  
  
Hooded Sweatshirt Guy was leaning down to wrap his ankles, also fixing the wrappings on his fists. Riddick was reminded of the few pictures of racehorses he'd seen, genetically engineered to eliminate the flaws of inbreeding and enhance the benefits of bloodlines. Their legs were wrapped, as were the hands of professional fighters in more elite arenas than this, because it was their greatest asset. He decided that the image was not far wrong. This person was born to and bred for fighting, and trained well. Most of the fighters in the arenas went bare-knuckle, not knowing any better and too dumb to figure it out.  
  
Now, what the fighter was doing here in Slam City, he didn't know. Even most professional fighters had the sense to stay out of the worst prisons, if they did get caught for whatever transgressions they might commit. He couldn't think what this person might be doing in among the worst of the worst. But it was going to make things a hell of a lot more interesting.  
  
He approached the fighter when just about everyone else had gone. Doc lurked in the shadows, making sure Riddick didn't get himself into trouble or maybe just indulging in his curiosity. But that was Doc. The Doc was safe, trusted with most of Riddick's secrets. Anyone Riddick didn't want to see in the background when he met the fighter was gone from the immediate area. Everyone else was too far away to see or hear clearly.  
  
"Impressive fight," he said, leaning casually on the door of the cage. The fighter tied a last boot-lace and stood up slowly, looking at Riddick, sizing him up. No response.  
  
"Do you usually go for the kill, or is that just a first-night kind of thing?" Riddick said after it became obvious that the other guy wasn't going to say anything. It was a safe enough guess; it didn't look as though Buzz-Cut would be dancing any jigs anytime soon, at least. The fighter only shrugged.  
  
"You got a name?" Shrug. "A nickname?" Shrug. "You do talk, right?" Rude gesture. The fighter pushed past Riddick and started walking out, moving easily as though he hadn't just been in a grueling forty-five minute pit fight. "I know who you are." He whispered it as the fighter went past, sure that the other person would hear him.  
  
"How the hell do you..." she snapped angrily, turning and glaring from beneath her hood, realizing only after the first few words were out that he'd tricked her. "Sonofabitch," she shook her head ruefully. "You got me. You're the first person so far to notice. I am impressed."  
  
Riddick chuckled. She wasn't taking it hard, which meant she'd probably expected to be found out sooner or later. That was also smart of her, not to believe in the invulnerability of her disguise. "You're very good. It was the way you were jumping around... your ankles, your feet.. that kind of thing... that gave me the first clue. I can see why you use the disguise, though... you're not exactly the usual thing around here."  
  
That was an understatement. Women were very rarely dumped in Slam City, and the ones that were had committed crimes so violent that it was thought they'd actually survive in a highly male-dominated prison population. Some of them actually did survive on their own, by violence. Most of them, the average girl, found a protector or group of protectors, becoming joy-girls for a prison gang in exchange for protection from the rest of the inmates. Most of the rest didn't survive even remotely intact. Some just withdrew and committed suicide shortly after being dumped in, some were meat for anyone stronger and were eventually killed. The guards didn't exactly prevent rape from happening, although they would tend to break up the gang- bang fests. The upper echelons pointed this out whenever someone challenged the roughly co-ed policy of Slam City. They also pointed out that having women around took some of the sexual pressure off of the men, made the prison population more docile. Most of them, anyway.  
  
Women had never made it into the pit-fights.  
  
She was actually pretty attractive, too, Riddick thought as he walked alongside her through the empty corridors. They had a few hundred yards till they hit the general population, where he anticipated that she'd take down her disguise or at least relax her guard a little. Away from the pit fights, she might figure that no one would match her up with the tiny fighter who'd kicked the melee's collective ass.  
  
He could see close-cropped dark-blonde hair under the hood -- it looked like she buzzed it, like his own preferred hairstyle -- and bright blue eyes that highlighted surprisingly fine features. You couldn't tell from the bone structure of her face how many fights she'd been in, unlike Buzz- Cut earlier in the night. If she'd had any bones broken she'd had them either surgically replaced or they'd mended amazingly straight. She didn't even have the standard broken nose.  
  
"I figured it was the easiest way to establish that I'm not going to be a prison whore," she explained after several minutes. "They'll figure it out sooner or later."  
  
"It's also a challenge," Riddick pointed out, "To anyone who thinks they can ..." he paused, looking for a word that wasn't too cliche. "Tame you," he shrugged. It sounded like something out of a bad porno, but it was accurate enough.  
  
"You mean beat me into submission," she shrugged also. "It happens. And it's better than being attacked every night. This way people at least think twice, maybe even three times, before they mess with me. This way, when they do find out, they'll have some idea of what I can do. Of what I'm willing to do."  
  
Riddick laughed. "Yeah. You're definitely not the usual thing around here." No matter what they might have done on the outside, once in Slam City women tended to become a great deal more passive when faced with the oceans of testosterone. They rarely killed other men, although insider fights in the women's cellblock could be vicious and deadly.  
  
She glanced over at him. "You're not the usual thing around here either. Did the shine-job give you zoom lens, too, or are you just observant? Most people wouldn't figure it out just from a pair of legs. Especially a pair of legs in baggy sweatpants and big shoes."  
  
"Just observant." Riddick smiled his usual unpleasent smile again.  
  
"Huh."  
  
They reached the general population area. She pulled her hood down a little, revealing delicate and tiny ears and tufts of hair where her shaving appliance, shiv or whatever, hadn't gotten quite so close as on top. Her ears were pierced too, he noticed, but she wore no earrings that could be grabbed and ripped out in the middle of a fight. Smart. "Gotta go..." she said. "Got things to do, people to hurt..."  
  
A girl after his own heart. Which reminded him... "I'd like to fight you, sometime..."  
  
She glanced at him, startled. "What?"  
  
"No, I'm serious. I'd like to fight you sometime. When you start fighting without the..." he gestured at the sweatshirt. "Disguise-thing." It was curiosity more than anything that prompted him to make the offer. He'd never run into a creature like her before, in the Slam or outside of it. He'd get to know her in every other way, but he'd probably never get a chance to fight her outside of the pit. And he was intensely curious.  
  
She looked him up and down, sizing him up. Riddick had the feeling she was more careful than the people who usually gave him those kinds of looks -- he had the feeling she was evaluating his speed and intelligence as well as the very visible strength. His respect for her went up a few notches. So did his estimation of her deadliness. What had she done to get thrown in here? Was it as brutal and ruthless as she acted now, or had she changed, been through more systems than just Ursa Minor?  
  
"Tell you what. You get the first fight after I get unmasked."  
  
He arched an eyebrow at the deal she offered -- it wasn't exactly something she could be sure she had control over. Still, it would be one hell of a show, and one hell of a fight.  
  
"Deal."  
  
She grinned, then, a wide and maniacal grin that said she enjoyed a good physical challenge as much as he did. It was startling to see, especially in a woman built like her. She looked as though he could break her over his knee without trying. "I'll see you around, Richard," she said, and dashed off. He stared after her, startled. How had she known who he was? And... wait a minute...  
  
"Hey, hang on!" he called after her, "You never told me your name!" 


	2. I'll drink to that

* * *

When Fantine had learned she was to be sent to the Ursa Luna Double Max Slam Facility she had made it her business to learn everything she could about the prison. She had found a former inmate who'd turned trader and merchant between the prison population and the universe outside and squeezed all the information she could out of him during her trial. Her lawyer had overheard the prosecutor and the judge talking; there wasn't going to be any hope of acquittal for her. Which, granted, she had rather expected. She'd plainly done the crimes for which she'd been accused; the only question remaining was what would end up happening to her. It was either women's top-security detention, or the Slam.  
  
The commodities broker had told her that it would probably be better if she kept a low profile, at least for the first few weeks. If she survived that long in the Slam without turning into someone's helpmeet or slave, she'd survive whatever time she'd be in there. At the very least her odds would improve astronomically. It was the first few weeks that would be hard. She started forming a plan the second she'd heard that, and gone to the broker again with odd requests for equipment, information. She hadn't told him her plan.  
  
He could provide her with some prison issue luxury clothes that would help her disguise -- for a price, of course. He had even offered to find her a protector. That part she had flat-out vetoed, suspecting that he would cut himself in on a percentage of whatever the would-be protector would pay him for the privilege of having first crack at her. He was so disappointed when she simply handed him a list of the rest of the items she needed. She could damn well protect herself.  
  
She had, however, accepted his offer of securing a place for her to sleep before she got there. She'd even paid him exorbitant amounts (or at least what she considered exorbitant amounts) to get it. He was relatively honest, which meant that he knew full well the consequences of double- crossing anyone he did business with; once word got out, no one would do business with him again. He'd be free meat for anyone who wanted. She paid the price, and got what she paid for.  
  
As she walked along the rows of cells in the women's block she was glad that she had paid, noticing the men wandering easily in and out of some of them. There were certain cell blocks that just had no guards on them; a closer inspection saw that the red covering on the alarm lights had been smashed on all but those blocks. Some traditions just never died. These were the so-called red-light districts, and the guards pimped out the weaker female inmates as whores for the prisoners who (most likely) were especially well behaved, at least within the range of the guards' sight and hearing. Fantine muttered something nasty under her breath, vowing never to end up in those cell blocks. Gang rape, even organized, sequential gang rape, was not her idea of a good time.  
  
The last cell-block in the women's wing didn't have a guard, but it didn't have a red light either. This was probably the VIP wing, reserved for high- profile criminals and prisoners who, again, had earned special privileges. And true enough, on the way down to her cell she passed a couple ferroglass enclosures, three maximum security cells, and one person who even warranted guards outside the cell itself.  
  
Fantine wondered what _she_ had done.  
  
She got to her cell: fifteen down and on the third floor, in the corner. Which meant it was about five square feet bigger, a luxury she could definitely appreciate in this kind of crowded setting. It was probably meant for two people, maybe even four, but unless the prison's population of women suddenly increased dramatically, it was all hers. Satisfactory, at least. No lights; there were hardly any lights in the Slam, except for the alarms and the few helmets that inmates manage to scrounge from the guards. But there were a couple indentations in the wall for candles and matches, both of which rivaled cigarettes and alcohol for value here.  
  
She examined the bed; mattress, blankets, and frame. It was all surprisingly clean and new, but these days they probably just recycled the materials. Poking it revealed that it was a foam-stuffed rectangle of fabric, nothing fancy, but at least it didn't have vermin or bodily fluids or diseases lurking in it. The frame was sturdy, metal and spring. Good enough. She walked over to the sink and tested the hot and cold taps; they worked. The toilet flushed. The wall and floors were solid; no mice, rats, or worse. The couple shelves tacked up against the wall were solid enough for her to do pull-ups on; she did a few, experimentally.  
  
"Well, it's not the Carrington House, but it'll do," she murmured to herself.  
  
"It might as well be," came a voice from outside her cell. Fantine spun around, falling automatically into a defensive crouch before forcing herself to relax. Whoever it was hadn't come into her cell itself, which meant they weren't forcing her to accept them in a dominant position. She could work with this.  
  
"The welcoming committee?" she ventured a guess.  
  
"Close enough." The woman, who actually had long hair for a prisoner, was leaning nonchalantly against the doorway as though she was as comfortable in Slam City as she was in the safety of her own home. Then again, maybe she was. Lifers tended to view the prison as their home, and got very edgy when someone took them out of the familiar environment. And she did look to be in her late forties, early fifties. Fantine put her at forty eight, with a twenty year stint in the Facility.  
  
What the hell, it couldn't hurt to at least be polite and see what she wanted. Fantine stuck out her hand. "Fantine St. Germain."  
  
The older woman shook it. "Nicole Patterson. I hear you're our new ward."  
  
Interesting choice of words. "Something like that. Felony murder, arson, armed robbery... many counts. You?"  
  
"Multi-million dollar graft and felony murder. I was a white-collar criminal." Nicole smiled ruefully, shrugging her shoulders as if to indicate that she'd somehow learned better. Fantine doubted that, but if the other woman wanted to play she was willing to play. "We all do stupid things when we're young."  
  
Fantine arched eyebrows at the comment. It wasn't what inmates Slam City were supposed to say, but apparently it was part of her game. At least she didn't sound as though she believed it, although she did seem to expect Fantine to swallow. "And what would you have done differently, knowing what you do now?"  
  
"Not gotten caught," she replied immediately. Both women laughed. Game over. Fantine relaxed just the tiniest bit.  
  
"I'll drink to that. Where's the canteen around here? It's been about twenty four hours since I had a decent meal..." Actually she knew exactly where the canteen was; up-to-date maps of the Facility, both actual and official, were some of the first things she'd purchased from her contact on the outside. But she figured a meal with the woman would help them both open up a little, maybe establish her status as off-limits, maybe even get her a bit more information on the place.  
  
"Women's canteen or general?"  
  
"General."  
  
Nicole grinned. "Women's is usually pretty empty anyway. The guards actually enforce the women-only rule there. Come on, I'll take you down to it."

* * *

"I'm sorry, Richard, I can't help you. I really wish I could, believe me..."  
  
Riddick slammed a fist against the wall in exasperation. Despite the rarity of female inmates, and despite Doc Weller's usual ability to get into most of the patient records, he wasn't having any luck when it came to learning the female fighter's name. There had been three prisoner drops that evening, a record number even for Slam City, and a handful of women all told. Most of them under false names, and half of them 'blonde' with 'blue' eyes. Though if they were all natural blondes, or light enough to be called blonde, Riddick would eat his shirt. No one cared about the color of the eyes in the Slam, unless you were one of the fortunate few who survived having your eyes silvered. Riddick was the only one he knew about who had regained full sight.  
  
"I'll find out sooner or later, Doc, don't worry about it." He started pacing up and down the small infirmary, cracking his knuckles absently. "She's good, I know that much. And she's not the type to roll over for the usual prison toughs. She'll make a rep for herself, and then I'll find out who she is."  
  
"Assuming she actually tells anyone her real name," Doc pointed out.  
  
Riddick scowled. "I was hoping you wouldn't bring that up."  
  
"Richard, you know as well as I do what the chances of you learning her name are if she doesn't want you to know who she is. Given the dramatic way in which she entered our illustrious facility, she could probably have you barred from the women's wing if she wanted to. She looks like the sort of lady who is very much aware of her capabilities, and uses all the resources available to her to achieve what she wants."  
  
"Just my kind of woman," Riddick muttered. "Stubborn, tough, and smart." Resources. The Doc had mentioned something about resources. "What kind of resources do you think she has?"  
  
"She entered here in somewhat more of an equipped fashion than the average inmate. In order to do that she would have to bribe both someone on the outside, or at least halfway to it, to give her the materiel and several of the guards to let her pass through with it. Which means she comes from money."  
  
Riddick frowned. "Where the hell did a girl like her get money? And why didn't she use it to hire a fancy lawyer?"  
  
"Might I suggest you approach her with caution, Richard?" the Doc said sarcastically, ignoring the questions. Riddick glanced sharply up at the doctor. "Far from knowing where she acquired her dubious riches or what she uses them for, you know nothing of what she might want. For all you know she could be planted by... by the Company to facilitate their surveillance on our fair city, or by other organizations, even governments. That would certainly explain her entrance, her ... oddities."  
  
The Company. Code for the organization that had gotten Riddick sent to the Slam in the first place. He knew what they were like, and intimately. They wouldn't be above hiring a woman sent to the Slam to check on him. "She could be a paid assassin for all I know..."  
  
"... she could very well have been..."  
  
"... or care. She's here now, I'm more concerned with what she's going to do than who she's going to do it for or how much money she's getting paid to do it." Lie. A flat-out lie, but he'd get a closer look at her and see if she was really from Them. They all left a stamp on their people, the mark of a religious zealot that was hard to disguise. Even if you could avoid talking the talk, the walk had the annoying tendency to stay with you.  
  
The doctor frowned, and Riddick winced inwardly. Although his remarks had been flippant more for show, he knew he was in for it just for being so off- hand. "You should care who she's going to do it for, and how much money she's getting paid to do it. Lest you forget, my impetuous friend, you are not exactly possessed of the lowest of profiles here, and the interest you've generated has only increased with time. You've earned yourself a black mark in the Company books, and you've quite likely achieved a little listing by your name that says 'too dangerous to live.' They may have sent her to take care of the problem you present. Think about it, Richard. What other sort of prisoner would be so guaranteed to capture your attention so quickly, yet not in such a way as to be endangered by your quirks of behavior? Who else knows you so well?"  
  
Riddick scowled, but he had to admit, the doctor had a point. Several, actually. Doc Weller knew him well, just about better than anyone else in the known universe and certainly better than anyone else in the prison. He was the doctor Riddick had gone to for the shine job on his eyes, having heard that Weller was the best of the prison surgeons. They'd talked, come to an arrangement, and agreed on payment.  
  
But in the end, Riddick realized that he hadn't just paid the doctor in cigarettes. Cigarettes would have been enough to buy the eyes, maybe even the post-op treatment. But as he'd listened to Weller's constant babbling as he recovered and slowly regained his sight, he realized what else he'd given. Twenty menthols would not have been enough to buy the trust doctor and patient had to have in each other to perform the delicate surgery. Riddick had bought the doctor with protection as well, by bringing a little order to the doctor's rowdy clientele. He had bought the doctor with the increase of both their reputations. And, ultimately, he had bought the doctor with friendship.  
  
The end result being that the doctor knew him very well. Riddick sighed. "So what do you want me to do about her?" And then, just in case the doctor hadn't gotten the message and because Riddick was getting tired of feeling like an indulged child, "I'm not going to let this go, you know that."  
  
Doc Weller snorted. "If the challenge to what passes for your mind were not sufficient, the challenge to your male ego as well as the stimulation to your libido would certainly do you in. Just take care with her, Richard. Watch your back. Act as though I had installed optic sensors there," he poked the back of the bigger man's shaved head with two fingers, pushing it forward. "as well as giving you your so-called shine job."  
  
Riddick smirked. The comment had given him an idea. "Don't worry so much, Doc. Your arteries will harden." He walked out.  
  
The doctor shook his head slowly as the door closed softly behind Riddick. "It's not _my_ arteries I'm worried about."

* * *

"So, what's the deal around here? I don't think I've ever seen a max- security facility as sex-integrated as this one." Fantine started the conversation nonchalantly, as though she hadn't spent the last eight weeks researching the place.  
  
"Well, as you may have noticed, we've kind of got our own little empire going here... at least, some of the cons like to think of it that way. The guards don't really care what we do as long as no high-profile prisoners get shivved while they're still in the public eye, and there aren't any riots. Facilities for men and women are only nominally separate... unless you pay extra. Then you might actually get the guards to care who wanders into who's building."  
  
"Like a little private empire."  
  
The older woman smirked. "You're not far wrong. Rumor has it that the Russian Mafia runs this one as well as the Slam City on Beta Minor. Personally, I don't know about Russians, but someone organized runs this place. Not that it matters to us, I guess." They shared a brief laugh. Her words had intrigued Fantine, however.  
  
Nicole gestured around, "Over there is the sports center, which translates to a track and an open space for dodge ball. They only give us balls and running space to work out in, and they play vicious here. This is the general canteen, men's is over there, women's over there... they only care that the guys don't go in the girl's canteen. You saw the women's cells, guy's cells aren't much different, it's just that there's more of them. And they tend to be dirtier. Guards only care who goes into the VIP block, and only when we can scrape up the cash. Women's warden handles that end of it... this year we've got a pretty fair one, tells us when the outside buyers have scraped up enough money so that those of us on the inside don't have to pay."  
  
"Down below used to be a lot of tunnels with storage facilities, now they're just general chaos. You've got your fight clubs, run by the prison gangs... the top three are the Pit, the Cage, and the Ring. Sometimes you'll get your specialty fight in the canteen... on jello-days they like to pair up chicks who'll go for that kind of thing and watch them smear jello on each other."  
  
Fantine made a face. "Okay, that's definitely not my sort of thing."  
  
"Might want to make it your sort of thing, honey." Nicole sized her up, her tone one of friendly and patronizing advice. "If you can stomach it, being one of their prize-fighters isn't such a bad way to go. You get beat up less by the guys, and they treat you pretty well."  
  
_Yeah,_ thought Fantine, _they don't gang-rape you till after you're too old or too beat up to fight._ Not for her. Never for her. "What else is there?" she asked.  
  
Nicole leaned back. "Oh, let's see. You can freelance, take on the guys one at a time, go for the bigger and stronger types so they'll keep you safe from the rest of them. Obviously you passed the whorehouses on the way in, I wouldn't recommend going there. Fifteen, twenty guys a day. Ten, if you're lucky. It's not a good way to go."  
  
Fantine shuddered.  
  
"You could just keep to yourself, but it's probably best if you find someone to take you around for the first month or so... show you the ropes. Get a native guide, that kind of thing. And someone to keep an eye on you." Nicole eyed Fantine especially hungrily after that shudder, "I mean... no offense, but you really don't look big enough to handle yourself..."  
  
She was starting to get an idea of what the other woman wanted. Goosebumps trailed along her skin, although she knew that revealing too much of herself too early could be fatal. "I'm tougher than I look," she said, feigning nonchalance as she sipped her tepid water and tried not to shrink away too much. "Thanks, though."  
  
Nicole reached out and put a hand on the other woman's, stroking her thumb over the back of Fantine's hand. "Seriously, dear, you might want to think about it... hey. I could protect you... I've already got a cozy spot in the women's wing, and the boys know enough not to mess with me either. I can make things very unpleasant for them. Very. Unpleasant." She spoke as though she had just thought of the idea, but Fantine had the feeling she'd been planning the overture ever since Nicole had laid eyes on her.  
  
The unspoken threat in her words, of course, was that she could make things unpleasant for Fantine as well, if the younger woman didn't agree to be her little girlfriend. It made Fantine's skin crawl just thinking about it, and she slid her hand away. "I said, no thanks. I'll work it out on my own. Trust me..." Fantine leaned forward, letting the falsified emotions drain from her eyes and shifting her weight slightly so as to be ready to leap up from the table if it looked like Nicole would get ugly. Her type usually got ugly, but it was always a matter of when. "I can handle myself. Trust me." Her voice was a whisper by the time she'd finished.  
  
Nicole's expression was, indeed, starting to become unpleasant. "Fantine, you do not know how big of a mistake you're making..."  
  
Feet and a familiar step caught Fantine's attention. She missed the next half of the sentence with trying not to turn around and make sure it was who she thought it was. Something of the distraction must have shown on her face, because Nicole scowled and reached out to slap the younger woman in the face, hard. "Look at me, bitch, when I'm talking to..."  
  
She didn't get any further. Fantine grabbed the other woman's hand, slammed it down on the table hard enough that she heard bone crack, and slapped the other woman as hard as Nicole had been intending to slap her. "I said I'm tougher than I look, bitch," she mimicked savagely. "I meant it." She would have said more, but the footsteps were coming up directly behind her, and the altercation was drawing a crowd anyway.  
  
"You just keep making a spectacle of yourself, don't you," a deeply amused and familiar voice rumbled over her shoulder. "Hi, Nicole. Trolling for girlfriends again?"  
  
Nicole threw the man a venomous look and slid off the bench and away from the table without a word. Riddick moved over to take her seat and lounged across from Fantine as though he was perfectly at ease there. For all she knew, he was. He looked at her with abstract interest, nothing like the possessive lust Nicole had shown a second ago. It was highly preferable. "I really hate that woman," he said conversationally.  
  
Fantine chuckled. "From the way she was looking at you I'd say the feeling's mutual," she murmured. "What's up? Come to try and offer me your protection as well?"  
  
"You don't seem to need it," he shrugged. No sudden movements, no lewd gestures, just two people talking in that easy way that said neither of them had decided how to think of the other just yet. "I just wanted to talk to you. Find out a little bit more about you. Like your name. Or how you knew mine." He was still smiling, but the tone in his voice wasn't too friendly. She smirked slightly. She must have hit a nerve going off the way she had. But he was interesting enough, and could probably be trusted with the truth. Or at least a part of the truth.  
  
"When I heard I was being sent to the Slam, I got some of the halfway housers and asked them everything they knew about the place. Your name came up in the list of people not to fuck with. As for my name..." she paused. It couldn't hurt, not anymore. He probably wouldn't have heard of her anyway. "Fantine. Fantine St. Germain."  
  
"Fantine?" His eyebrows arched again. "What the hell kind of a name is that?"  
  
"An Aquiline one," she replied, amused.  
  
"You're Aquiline?"  
  
"Aquiline... From Avignon-sur-la-Reine. So, sort of."  
  
"What are you in for?"  
  
"Felony murder, armed robbery, arson..." she shrugged. "The list goes on. I hear you're in for mass murder and other crimes too ghastly to mention."  
  
Riddick grinned, leaning back so that his eyes shined in the bare minimum of light in the canteen. She had the feeling it was a posture he practiced often. It probably worked to scare off some of the smaller predators, but she just found it amusing and vaguely attractive. "That's me. Sociopathic stone killer."  
  
"Mmm." She shoved her tray to one side. "So why weren't you in the Cage?"  
  
He shrugged, looking uncomfortable for the first time since she'd met him. "I don't like getting put on display. I like to pick my fights."  
  
"Fights you know you can win?"  
  
He gave her a very direct look. "Fights that are worth fighting."  
  
It was an odd answer, coming from him, what she knew of him. And yet somehow she didn't think he was talking about the standard definition of 'worth fighting,' the usual moral prerequisite. She stared into his silvered eyes, trying to figure out what thoughts were racing behind them. She couldn't now but someday, she decided, she would make it her business to know each and every thought that passed through the man's brain. He wasn't the typical sort of inmate; he wasn't even the atypical sort of inmate. This was something new and different. And Fantine loved a challenge.  
  
She grinned, breaking the tension of the moment, and raised her glass of tepid, dirty water. "I'll drink to that." 


	3. Blood and Alcohol

* * *

Riddick was becoming a great deal more familiar with the miniature prison societies that lurked around the pit fights. He'd usually made it his habit to check them out once in what passed for a week or so, whenever there was a new prisoner drop of any substantial size. Mostly, though, it was so he could size up the competition, see who was likely to give him trouble. The fights had the nice side benefit of giving the newcomers a lesson in Slam City life, which kept the number of people who tried to notch their belt by taking him down to a minimum. Still, watching the fights meant he could see who was likely to be trouble and who could be slammed into a wall and left for dead.  
  
Now, though, he had a new reason to watch. And he started watching the crowds a little more, as well. He hadn't meant to, but she had asked him to keep an eye for her and see who got suspicious of her disguise. It wasn't a bad idea, especially since he had been promised first crack at her once she got unmasked. The favor had turned into a pleasure, and an intriguing study in the seamier side of the Slam. The gamblers, he'd noticed, were so desperate that it leaked off of them like a bad smell. The more bloodthirsty ones ran in packs, with their chosen champion fighter as the alpha male. The drifters wandered in and out, using the pit fights like their own Pay-Per-View tri-d network. As good a reason as any to watch, he supposed.  
  
Today Fantine was going one-on-one in the Pit with a bruiser he vaguely knew as 'Christian.' She, still sporting her torn sweats and the hood pulled down to obscure her face, was delicately beating the living daylights out of the other man. Now, however, she was billed as 'The Fury.'  
  
He wondered how many of the people watching the fight today remembered or had even learned their mythology, how many of them knew that the Furies were women. He wondered how many of them remembered their history, who the Furyes were. He wondered if Fantine knew. She probably saw it as her private little joke. Just another example of how clever she was, how much he would have to watch her. But there was no way she could have known... was there? Just another eerie coincidence.  
  
"This isn't a fight, it's a massacre," a voice said ruefully from behind and to the left of Riddick.  
  
"You got that right." Riddick chuckled, glancing over his shoulder. It was the red-head from the first night of her fights, which explained the comment. Of all people, he'd know what it felt like to be on the other end of those feet and fists. He'd know better than to underestimate her. "Riddick," he introduced himself, extending a hand to shake. The red-head actually seemed to have a brain left in his head. "Richard Riddick."  
  
"Nick Lawson," he shook Riddick's hand, still keeping one eye on the fight. "I take it you saw that first melee where he kicked my ass?"  
  
Riddick experienced a brief moment of cognitive dissonance as he remembered that when Fantine was The Fury, she was a 'he.' "Yeah, I was there. Lost some good money on you, too."  
  
Lawson laughed. "Well, don't feel bad. I lost some good money on me too, that night. He came out of nowhere and took us all by surprise." The red- headed man stared thoughtfully into the Pit, where Fantine was clearly toying with her opponent. "Wonder where he came from... and why he doesn't want us to see his face."  
  
Riddick shrugged. "Probably somewhere unpleasant. Maybe he's got hideous facial scars or... something." The subject was making him uncomfortable. For some reason he didn't want anyone else to know Fantine's secret. Probably because he was too possessive, too secretive himself to want anyone else to know. He knew what it was like to have your life depend on one small piece of crucial information.  
  
It didn't look like Lawson was particularly suspicious, though. "Probably..." Lawson said, dismissing it from his thoughts. "Although he'd have to be pretty ugly to stand out in this crowd."  
  
Riddick snickered. "Yeah."  
  
"Oooh... that has to hurt."  
  
Christian, getting tired of being hit and not being able to hit back, had charged Fantine. She had turn and run, causing the crowd to think she was running away from the fight and getting a hissing in result. The noises of disapproval had died away almost instantly as she had proceeded to run up the side of the pit, nearly falling into the audience, and flipping neatly behind Christian, kicking him into the wall. Riddick and Lawson winced, imagining the man's nose breaking with the impact. The man howled in pain and backed up, blood covering the front of his shirt in scarlet confirmation of their assumptions. Fantine backed up too, and stood lightly on the balls of her feet, bouncing just barely visibly. Riddick wondered if, like the last time she'd had a lengthy fight, this was the sign that she was going to end the fight soon. Christian either hadn't been to the last fight or just didn't have the brains to know better.  
  
Which reminded him... "Whatever happened to the other guy?" he asked Lawson.  
  
"Other guy?"  
  
"From your first fight."  
  
"Who... the big bruiser? Comatose. Doctors in the infirmary say he probably won't wake up. They'll keep him on ice for another couple of weeks and then break him down for spare parts." Lawson shrugged, the expression on his face suggesting he wasn't happy about it either. "Not exactly the nicest way to go, but even if he did wake up he'd be partially paralyzed from the way he got hit on the spine, and the lack of oxygen to the brain didn't help either. Man's probably a vegetable."  
  
Riddick's eyebrows arched upwards again. The woman was impressive, more so if she knew what she'd done to him. He hadn't seen any signs of remorse or pity for the man she'd apparently killed. "Looks like he'll have company."  
  
Christian didn't seem sure what to do. Charging had gotten his nose broken, but standing there and trying to punch hadn't gotten him any points either. Fantine bounced a little more, waiting for him to make up his mind, and then seemed to get impatient in a pretty spectacular way. She leaped into the air, twisting her torso around, hurricane kick to the head with first one foot and then the other. She landed nimbly on her feet and waited to see how the other man would react to that. Riddick could see the man's eyes glazing over even from where he stood. Lawson's breath hissed inward, impressed.  
  
Christian swayed a little on his feet, and then Fantine leaped up and kicked him in the chest again. He fell down and didn't move.  
  
The crowd was silent for a little while. Then the chant started to rise.. "Fu-ry! Fu-ry! Fu-ry!"  
  
"Holy shit..." Lawson whistled. "Looks like there's a new favorite in town." Fantine was rocking from heel to toe, waiting for the excitement to die down before she made her quick exit. A couple of the guards opened up the doors to the Pit again, their faces expressionless. She bounced a couple times and then ducked out between them.  
  
"Yeah..." Riddick watched the crowd, trying to see where she came out, but couldn't. If there was ever a time when she was going to be discovered, it would be before or after the fights. Before, when she was too hyped up to be cautious, or after, when she was too tired.  
  
"You ever fight in the rings?" Lawson was looking at him now, with a kind of speculation in his face that Riddick didn't at all like.  
  
"Sometimes. When the money's good enough." It was an easier answer than he'd given Fantine, and one Lawson would probably accept with fewer questions, from what he could tell of the other man. "Not lately."  
  
"Ah." He left it at that. "What do you think the Fury fights for?"  
  
It was a damn good question, even knowing what Riddick did about the fighter. "I don't know..."  
  
"I think he fights because he likes it. Because he likes to overpower people with what he has. He's not much stronger than a quarter of the guys in here, and definitely weaker than half. I'd say he falls into the lightweight category. But he's faster than most of them, and more clever. And he likes to beat them that way; he likes to make them feel slow and stupid. It gives him a feeling of power."  
  
Startlingly accurate. Riddick could see it. "What were you on the outside, a shrink?"  
  
Lawson laughed. "Close. A social worker."  
  
Riddick hated social workers. "You were a what?!"  
  
"Social worker, orphans, foster kids, placed them in temporary care, permanent care. Counseled the ones that got bounced from home to home." He shrugged. He looked embarrassed by being caught out as someone who actually cared about his fellow man. Not entirely a mistaken idea, since most people would as soon shiv him as look at him if they thought he was weak. And for most people in the Slam, caring equaled weak.  
  
But it didn't make sense. "So what's a social worker doing in the Slam?"  
  
"I ran street fighting tournaments on the side." Lawson's grin was wide, maniacal, and not entirely sane. But it did explain his analysis of Fantine's fighting style. "Used to be a professional kickboxer before I busted a knee, went into social work 'cause that's what I had my credentials in, got drawn into the underground scene... it went on from there. I figured it wasn't a bad way to make a little extra money."  
  
"Sorry I asked," Riddick muttered. He hated psychos; they were usually unpredictable, unreliable, and dangerous.  
  
"Even fought in a few of them," Lawson continued, and now Riddick was really sorry he'd brought it up. "Killed seventeen people in the ring before they finally busted us. Goddamn politicians got me convicted of murder one, conspiracy, accessory, and reckless endangerment. I never, ever brought those kids to the cage fights. Ever. They don't need to see that kind of thing." He degenerated into muttering to himself.  
  
Riddick just stared at the man. The guy was even more whacked than everyone said Riddick was. No wonder they'd sent him to Slam. "Course not," Riddick said, trying to shut him up.  
  
It seemed to work. "Sorry... pisses me off, that's all," Lawson pulled himself back together and looked over at Riddick. "So, know where a guy can get a brew around here? I know I smelled something good..."  
  
"If you can stomach the home brew, sure," Riddick grinned. A man's first taste of Cross's generator-room alcohol was always something entertaining to watch. "Come on, I'm sure we'll be able to talk someone out of a pint."  
  


* * *

  
  
"So what's his name?"  
  
Fantine nudged the unconscious body of Nick Lawson with a sneaker-clad toe as though it was something that might bite her if she got too close. Riddick stared blearily down at the man who had until half an hour ago been his drinking companion. "Nick..." he said, after a few moment's thought. "Nick Lawson. Kinda crazy."  
  
She sat down beside him. Somewhere in the last several hours she'd changed out of her fighting uniform (or what he'd come to think of as her fighting uniform) and into more normal prison clothes. Her blonde buzz-cut hair was starting to grow out, he noticed. Or maybe that was just the alcohol. She definitely looked a lot more delicate out of the ring. "Probably just freaked out at being in the Slam. He didn't seem like the kind of guy who'd be in here. What'd he do?"  
  
Riddick laughed. "You'll love this... he was a street fighter. Ran one of the tournaments in one of New Sol's big cities. And he took care of kids. Social worker."  
  
Fantine stared at the unconscious red-head. "Social worker. Huh. And a street fighter? I guess that explains how he survived so long in the Cage..." She started to chuckle. "Social worker and a street fighter. Christ in a ten-gallon bucket. What the hell is he doing in a place like this, did he molest the kids or kill people in the street fights?"  
  
"Killed people," Riddick shrugged. "He seemed pretty upset that someone might think he hurt the kids. That's when he went kinda crazy."  
  
"Ah, he's probably just not used to this place. Give him a few weeks, he'll just shrug and say he's innocent like everyone else does around here. Lots of people get a little crazy when they go to jail, whether it's the Slam or the Lockdown Resort," she named one of the other prisons famous for its minimal security and extravagant priviliges.  
  
"True... and some of them stay crazy..." Riddick was sobering up now. He also hadn't had nearly as much to drink as Lawson.  
  
"True."  
  
Fantine slid down against the wall and sat, putting Lawson between her and Riddick. Whether she'd positioned them that way consciously or unconsciously he didn't know. Neither would have surprised him. She seemed used to prison life, which meant she'd probably been in at least one before. It wouldn't have been like the Slam, though. Nothing was like the Slam. But he still wondered; there were so many questions he wanted the answers to, none of which he wanted to ask her. This woman, so different from most other women, and this place, so different from any other prison -- they were going to drive him mad.  
  
He looked down at his cup and grimaced. You probably got a better quality of alcohol in other prisons, too, although it was also probably more expensive. This stuff, brewed in the pipes in the generator room by an enterprising old man named Ben Cross, was probably more suited to killing infections than killing brain cells, and had been used for both. Still, it was alcohol. He did a brisk business in the foul-tasting stuff with real alcohol so hard to come by in prison, even for the rich folk.  
  
She noticed him making faces into his cup. "What's that?"  
  
Riddick grinned to himself. This was going to be fun. "Here..." he said, making his tone as mild as possible, "Try it."  
  
"Try it..." She made a suspicious face at him, figuring something was up by how innocent his tone sounded. "Okay, now I know you're up to something."  
  
"Okay, don't try it." He shrugged, pulling it back. Knowing she'd take it.  
  
"No, I'll give it a try..." she grabbed the cup from him and took a big swallow... bigger than he would have recommended for a first try. Sure enough: she made a hawking noise and coughed it up, eyes watering. "Shit! What the hell is that stuff?"  
  
Riddick couldn't answer at first, he was laughing too hard. She looked a mess with her face streaming and her nose wrinkled, her mouth puckered up. "Generator-brew alcohol. Probably adulterated with other kinds of bootleg beer, whatever people can smuggle in here. It tastes like absolute shit, but it gets you real drunk, real quick."  
  
She was still blinking, though her eyes were starting to unfocus. "I see that... holy shit. That really is strong. Fuck."  
  
"Your friend Nicole was probably going to drag you down here, pour it down your throat, and talk you into becoming one of her harem of bitches," Riddick pointed out. "I wouldn't drink it around anyone you don't trust."  
  
"So... don't drink it at all." Fantine smiled humorlessly. "Since I don't trust anyone in Slam further than I can throw them."  
  
There wasn't much he could say to that. He didn't trust anyone either.  
  
Between them, Nick Lawson was finally starting to wake up. "Oh god..." he muttered, "Did anyone get the tag number of the transport that hit me."  
  
Fantine laughed and passed Riddick back his blindness-inducing beverage. The bigger man smirked and poured it onto the tile floor, watching as it trickled down the drains lining the center of the hallway. "Welcome back to the land of the mostly living," she said amiably, listening to the liquid trickle.  
  
Lawson winced. "Don't laugh so loud. In fact, don't breathe so loud." He pushed himself to a sitting position and winced. "Ow. I guess that's one advantage to living in the dark... the lights don't blind you when you get hung over. Warn me next time, you bastard," he rolled his eyes in Riddick's general direction.  
  
"Of course not," Riddick said, smirking. "Lawson, this is..." he paused, letting Fantine figure out what she wanted to do about her identity.  
  
"Fantine St. Germain." She threw Riddick a grateful look. "I caught your fight with the Fury the other day. Not bad."  
  
"Thanks..." he winced. "I think. Though right now I kind of wish he'd killed me."  
  
"Riddick sprang the rotgut shit on you too, huh?" she clapped him on the shoulder in a display of mock-sympathy, which only had the effect of causing Lawson to groan more. "See, now, I was clever enough not to actually drink the damn thing. But, by all means... better you than me."  
  
Lawson blinked hazily at her. "You're a bitch, you know that?"  
  
Riddick and Fantine laughed. "Lawson," Riddick shook his head, "I've been saying that since she landed in here." 


	4. Routine

It was amazing how quickly things became routine, Fantine mused. She finished the last of a set of 120 pull-ups, finishing her exercises, stretching out to cool her body down. All part of the routine. Light exercises in the morning, then breakfast. It was slop, but it was breakfast and nutritious for all that it didn't resemble anything she would have chosen to eat. Couldn't have the inmates dying left and right of malnutrition, after all. That would look bad.  
  
Hanging around in the common room till noon, meeting people, making connections, talking with people. Putting in the occasional appearance as 'The Fury' so she could arrange her next fight. Then lunch. Some days she talked to Lawson, walking with him around the common areas and in the exercise yard. Some days she talked to Doc, sitting in the infirmary and taking her turn subduing and sedating violent patients or friends of patients. Some days she talked with Keyes, one of the newest friends she'd made in the Slam.  
  
More exercise, a light dinner, then walking or fighting. Anything to keep her strength, keep the whipcord muscle by which she survived on her body. And fighting kept her reputation up, further enhanced the rumors that the Fury was not someone to be messed with lightly. Then some nights she went to bed early, some nights she sat up drinking and carousing with her new- found friends.  
  
Some nights she spent with Riddick.  
  
All part of the routine.  
  
She'd usually been a pretty asexual creature, with her lean body and lack of prominent breasts. Having decided early on that she would never be conventionally beautiful, she had made it a point to become striking. After a couple years she'd added untouchable to the list, finding most people a waste of her time and energy, at least in any sense of a long-term fling. She had no sympathy for people who let their bodies go to fat, and less for people who were deliberately, persistently stupid.  
  
Whether in spite of or because of this her lovers had always been somewhat conventionally handsome, well-muscled, and always very intelligent. Any long-term sexual relationship she had with someone, no matter how careful she was, had the chance of producing offspring. She was just careful enough to never sleep with stupid, ugly, or weak-willed and weak-bodied men; all four traits could breed true. Riddick was a eugenics director's wet dream: strong, agile, healthy, handsome, and clever.  
  
Perfect.  
  
He was also much more sexual than she, so she hadn't been terribly surprised to realize that he'd been making moves on her all along. She'd ignored it at first, entertained the idea after a little while, and eventually come to find him attractive enough to sleep with. They had consummated their bizarre courtship in one of the temporarily abandoned back closets in the tunnels, after a night of violence and alcohol. Nothing had been said: there were no words or even kisses, just hot and mutually passionate sex, bodies moving in the oldest rhythm in the absolute darkness of the prison.  
  
Nicole had given them both very dirty looks when they'd reappeared together that morning for breakfast in the general canteen, reeking of sweat and sex. Both of them wearing identical self-satisfied smirks. Both of them moving with the secret yet significant awareness of each other that came with their newfound intimacy. Fantine figured she was jealous, and ignored her; Riddick found her amusing, and baited her every time he got the chance. Once word got around, though, Nicole was the only person in either male or female blocks who would mess with her. She wasn't sure if Riddick was doing more to enhance her reputation or to degrade it when her hidden status as the Fury eventually came out. Whatever.  
  
Fantine finished her stretches and sat on the bed, thinking. For the first time in a very long time she actually found herself wondering what her parents would have thought, had they still been alive. Well, for one thing, they would probably have pulled whatever strings they could have to keep her out of the Slam. She just hadn't cared enough to buy herself a place in a better prison; by then she'd had better things to spend her money on, and once she'd found out a little bit about the place she'd been curious. A prison in near-total darkness. What must that be like? But now she was actually wondering what her parents would have done, and what they would have thought of Riddick. A far cry from the doctors and lawyers they'd wanted her to marry when she was in university. Marry one of them, raise genius children.  
  
Fuck that. She'd seen what being a genius got her; she'd seen the stronger kids beating the geniuses in school till their brains were so battered they couldn't genius anymore. Anyone she slept with would be strong as well as smart. All the best qualities she could give her children, the advantages she had never had growing up in the brainy but weak-bodied schools she'd gone to. Tactics only got you so far, you had to have the brawn to back it up.  
  
Marriage? Fuck that too. The divorce rate was higher than the murder rate in some cities. Her own parents' marriage was a carefully constructed façade, a sham, a front to put up before the paparazzi cameras. She was a token daughter, the little scholar with all the fancy paperwork, oh so pretty and wise and learned. Behind closed doors she pierced her ears and navel and marked up her arms with bruises from fighting. Her mother binged quietly on drink and drugs until her eyes turned yellow with premature age; her father slept with more women and men than she could conveniently count. There was no part of the marriage vows they hadn't broken, and yet she was expected to conform to the sacrament they had trashed so thoroughly.  
  
Her parents, she decided, would have been completely scandalized by her new lover. Well, they were dead. She didn't even know why she was thinking of them anymore.  
  
Dinner time soon, and then a new fight. Riddick was surprised that her disguise as The Fury had lasted so long; so was she, when she stopped to think about it. It didn't matter, she guessed, that she kept her face and voice hidden. The added mystery was probably what made her so attractive as a fighter. And the really funny part was: how many of the audience guessed why she kept her identity a secret? Probably very few. Maybe none. Women were allowed to participate in the fights; some of them even did participate in the great melees. But none went into the one-on-one rings, because the penalty for losing one of those would probably be rape, and the penalty for winning one (if the guy involved took exception to the threat to his machismo) would be unbearable.  
  
Fantine wondered what would happen when someone found out who she was. Even more, she wondered what would happen when the people she'd slowly become friends with found out about her alter ego. Riddick and Doc Wellers were the only ones who knew. Not even Lawson realized who it was who had beaten him their first night in. Riddick had guessed, somehow, the first night she'd fought. The Doc knew because he was the only one whom she let examine her, ever. Also, she suspected Riddick had told him. Oh well.  
  
She stretched, leaping lightly off the bed and making her way down to the women's canteen for a quick, quiet dinner. She usually ate dinner there on the nights that The Fury was supposed to fight; it made things so much easier. And afterwards she would find Riddick, probably waiting in the corridors outside the arenas as usual. For whatever reason, tonight the thought of him made her blood burn and her skin heat up. Fantine smiled a little... she'd make this fight quick. Tonight, it wasn't violence she wanted. Not the kind of violence that she'd find in the fighting ring, anyway.  
  


* * *

  
  
Keyes had a sharpster's eye for finding an easy mark, someone who hadn't often gone to the fighting rings and didn't know the Fury's capabilities. There was always some sort of a signal from him when he found one, and then Lawson and Riddick would move in and make a few private bets. Riddick never told Fantine how much they were making off of her fights; he had the feeling she suspected, but he'd never told her. Instead he used the profits for whatever struck his fancy, and as often as not it was arranging precious hours of privacy and luxury. His trysts with Fantine took up a decent chunk of those profits.  
  
Tonight they met in her cell, having arranged for the biggest players in the women's cell block to be distracted for a few hours after Fantine's fight. It wasn't that hard; a few menthols to the right people and the women's block was practically cleared with a riot in one block down the hall, a veritable orgy in the sub-basement, and a couple of spirited discussions elsewhere. They didn't have the floor all to themselves, but they wouldn't be interrupted. A sheet in front of her bars was held in place by a few knives. They didn't need the light.  
  
"Good fight," he murmured laconically, grinning as he watched her slowly disrobe. She had enjoyed it too; she must have, for rather than just stripping off her clothes and pulling him down to the bunk she was making a production out of it.  
  
Her shirt peeled off first, still tacky with sweat and a little dried blood. Her pants next, sliding down her legs as she stood in a pose designed to draw attention as she moved cloth from skin. She stepped out of them delicately, every inch of her moving with deliberation. Her one-piece bra, more of a chest wrapping, was pulled off in such a way as to create maximum exposure of her tiny breasts. No more than a handful, each. He stopped her as she was about to slip off that one last piece.  
  
"Mmm?"  
  
"Wait."  
  
He was a sucker for a good aesthetic. Although there was so little light that even her adjusted eyes couldn't see, to him, she looked beautiful. Balanced lightly on the balls of her feet; she almost always stood like that, as though ready to run or leap-kick at any moment, a good survival tactic for the prison. Eyes wide to capture the most light, head tilted slightly to one side to hear any movement around her. She'd adapted better than most to life in near-total darkness. And she still looked beautiful.  
  
"Come here."  
  
She went. It never ceased to amaze them both how easily they could order each other around. Mutual respect went a long way, she supposed. And not a small bit of mutual lust. He pulled her onto his lap, sliding his hands up her legs and parting her thighs easily around his waist. She locked her ankles behind the small of his back and wrapped her arms loosely over his shoulders. Her fingertips stroked the back of his smooth-shaven head.  
  
"Did you have fun?" he asked. He almost always did.  
  
"Of course..." she grinned. "Santino was a pushover."  
  
"Literally." She'd ended the fight when her opponent had been almost too dazed to stand, literally by stretching out a hand and pushing him over. It had gotten a wave of laughter throughout the spectators. Probably what had put her in such a good mood. "Probably didn't know what hit him."  
  
"Damn skippy."  
  
His hands slid up and down over her sides, thumbs lightly massaging her stomach. She stretched a little, wriggling at the warmth of his hands in the cold air of the Slam. He was always so warm, a walking furnace. She didn't understand it, although she liked it well enough when he was in her bed. She returned the gesture, fingers pressing gently along his neck and shoulders.  
  
"Got anything in mind for your next bout?" he asked as he bent his head to her throat. For a second she couldn't respond, couldn't think beyond his lips over her skin and down to her breast. She took a deep breath, answering as he took his time.  
  
"Not yet." It came out as a whisper. "I'll think of something. No end of bruisers waiting to get their noses broken."  
  
His tongue teased over her skin. "Mmm."  
  
It was almost a game with them, although a game they both willingly lost. Tonight he was making the most of his advantage; her blood was already up from the fight, adrenalin rushing through her veins. It didn't take much for him to drive all coherence from her thoughts. When he finally lifted his head and grinned, eyes flashing silver, she pressed her body to his and rocked against him.  
  
"Easy, there..." he murmured, but his arms tightened around her nonetheless. His strong arms, as big as her legs around, he could crush the wind out of her if he wanted.  
  
She ran her hands down his shoulders, up again, tracing her fingertips over his skin. "Mmm. So, when are we going to see you in the ring?"  
  
"Not until our fight," he chuckled. The sound rolled over her skin like waves of heat, prickling and burning. "You know I don't go in for that sort of thing. Besides, it's much more fun watching you beat people up."  
  
"Ka-pow." She smiled, gently tapping closed fists to his cheek.  
  
He reached up, caught her hands in his and turned the movement into a caress, pressing her palms to his face. She traced the lines of his jaw, slid her fingertips over his mouth. He kissed her fingertip, nipped, rolled her finger into his mouth and flickered his tongue wetly around the digit. She gasped, sliding her free hand to his waist and up under his shirt.  
  
"Ka-pow," he rumbled when he finally pulled back, triumphant. She rolled her hips forward, feeling him underneath her, rewarded with his own small gasp. "Mmm-hmm?"  
  
"Enough talk."  
  
There was no tenderness or artistry to the kiss; she pressed her lips to his and they were gone. His arms tightened around her as he leaned back, pulling her on top of him, then sitting up again to help her tug off his shirt. They rolled around awkwardly for a bit, fumbling their hands over each other's bodies like teenagers, trying to get undressed. Frantic, they ripped ties and laces, pushing clothing off their bodies, off the bunk. And then, as he pulled her back down onto him, it all melted away into calm, almost lethargic rhythm and the heat of their bodies. Sweat and flesh and the little gasping noises they made in the darkness.  
  


* * *

  
  
The evenness of her breathing, the relaxed rigidity of her limbs told him that she was finally asleep. It was one of the small courtesies they gave each other, never sneaking out of bed and out of the cell block until the other was asleep. If neither of them were in the other's pod, it depended on who fell first. Since they were in her pod tonight, he'd allowed himself to doze a little before getting up and slipping out.  
  
Riddick had always been a pragmatic man and in the Slam, where life was deliberately as brutal as possible, a great deal of that pragmatism was bent towards making his life easier. At first it had been mostly alcohol and solitude. After the Doc had shined his eyeballs he was a little more social, broadening his horizons and preferred habits to include some conversation.  
  
In Fantine he had found an oddity; not only a woman he could hold a decent conversation with, a woman who intrigued and matched him on all levels physical and mental, but also one who was not really unattractive. Although she never would have agreed he actually found her quite pretty; beautiful, even, compared to the beaten-down and haggard appearance of every other woman in the Slam Facility. There was something about the way they were brutalized, or the way they had to turn to brutalizing others that made them all hard and ugly, uncomfortable to be around.  
  
Fantine had intrigued him at first because of her spectacular entrance. She held his attention by constantly surprising him. When she hadn't seem to fade, wilt, or corrupt from the inside out through prison life, he'd started to entertain thoughts of a seduction. It was not, upon reflection, a mistake.  
  
It wasn't what he'd expected or anticipated of his life in the Ursa Luna Slam. But it wasn't unpleasant either. Actually it was kind of nice to be able to interact with people on a less than primal level, to be able to have decent conversations with someone other than the Doc. Not that he disliked the man's company, but it was starting to get old, only one person whose ideas and opinions he could respect.  
  
It was also, although he rarely admitted it to himself, very nice to be able to relieve the stress in other ways. Primal, physical ways. Since making friends with the Doc he'd learned about the contraceptive implants, although he'd known there had to be something. No children in the Slam whatsoever, but that could just have meant that they took them away or forced the women to get abortions. Not something he wanted to deal with. Not with the kind of women found in Slam City, most of them not even the kind he'd spend time with beyond the fifteen minutes necessary to do the deed. Fantine was different, respectable. It was all right.  
  
He sometimes wondered, though, what made it all right for her.  
  
She was at least as standoffish as he was. Lawson, Keyes, even the Doc had more friends than she seemed to. She was friendly to everyone and friends with very few, even from what he heard out of the women's block. She disdained the company of almost all other women in the Slam, not that he could blame her. There wasn't much good company out of habitual victims, which most of the women were, and the rest were too busy jockeying to keep their independent positions. Most of the rest of the population of Slam would be busy trying to draw her into their own little games, their stables or harems or followers. She'd managed to avoid that, somehow. But she'd also managed to avoid making friends.  
  
Lawson he was finding a little more palatable. A little more understandable. The craziness he now knew was due to panic had mostly settled down when he'd realized it wasn't quite so bad of a place. Not for him, anyway, who had made a name for himself surviving as long as he did in his first cage fight. There was still the tendency to run off at the mouth too much when he got nervous or scared, but most of the time he was all right. And he did offer some more introspective, valuable insight into the motivations and thoughts of other prisoners. Riddick didn't usually bother with that head-shrinking bullshit.  
  
He wondered what Lawson would say if he knew anything more specific about Riddick and Fantine's liaisons. Mutual respect and lust went a lot further than cock-eyed love, to Riddick's way of thinking. 


	5. Everything Changes

Riddick glanced around the general canteen surreptitiously, but didn't see her. He hadn't really expected to anyway, since she didn't show up on the nights when she was supposed to fight, but he'd almost been hoping. For one thing it was only so long before Lawson or Keyes or someone would notice the correlation, and then there would be questions. And then there would be messes, because she was one of the few people he knew who killed as easily as he did. Lawson was making a name for himself in the street fights, too, but he didn't kill people as often as she did, in the ring.  
  
He'd asked her about that, one night in bed. Why she killed so many people, the third highest kill count of anyone in the gladiator-style fights. Her response had been almost chillingly logical. The more people she killed, the less they'd look at her as a woman when she was finally unmasked. They'd look at her as a killer. And maybe they'd leave her alone. He couldn't fault her logic, but there was something disturbing about those words coming from a delicately feminine face. Even to him.  
  
It wasn't the only disturbing thing about her. After a couple weeks in the Slam he'd found her cutting her hair again, buzzing it back down to its previous peach-fuzz length. She shaved her head almost as close as he did, and her hair had been getting long enough to where she looked almost elfin with her naturally blonde hair and her pale blue eyes. He'd run his fingers over it a time or two, while she was sleeping, after sex. In the dark no one else was able to see the tiny gestures he made, inexplicable even to him. Her hair had been fine and soft under his fingertips. It felt almost like life on the outside, almost like life from years ago.  
  
Funny how little things like that brought back so many memories.  
  
She buzzed her hair. She kept her ears pierced with a pin sterilized by flame, but didn't wear earrings. Jewelry was available in the Slam, although it was usually made out of polished bits of metal and worn by the prettier showpieces paraded around the cells. It made sense for her not to wear earrings, but not to keep her ears pierced. She kept fit with fight, exercise, sex. She never lost the spring in her step or the lightness in her voice, and he didn't understand why.  
  
Everyone else, even Doc, had succumbed to prison life. To the routine, day in and day out, same old nasty meals and brutal entertainment, half-lit cells and human refuse lying everywhere. Even Riddick, after so much time, found himself thinking more often like a prisoner and less like a fighter. He didn't know how much time had passed since his arrival, since hers. Time didn't mean anything down here once you got past hours and minutes.  
  
Fantine had brought a spark of life, tiny as it was, to their little group. She managed to get smiles out of the Doc, real smiles and not the sardonic grins he used to give. She could get sane conversation out of Lawson and Keyes, and that was a minor miracle in and of itself; as much as he enjoyed their company neither of them were what one could call stable.  
  
And thinking of whom, all three of them were conspicuously absent.  
  
At least one of them was probably in the Cage arena, waiting with the rest of the early crowd for Fantine to arrive and the night's fight to begin. Actually the Doc was probably already there, since tonight's fight was supposed to be a really nasty one. The as-yet undefeated Fury (and he still had no idea how she'd pulled that one off) versus the man known with dubious affection as 'Scarface,' Jose Aquino. He'd seen both of them fight; the first time he'd seen Scarface fight he'd known it would be only a matter of time before he fought the Fury.  
  
Aquino been in so many fights that his nose was permanently at almost right angles to the rest of his face. He'd lost the use of one eye due to a surprise shiv in the middle of a one-on-one, although it didn't seem to slow him down any. His whole upper body was a mass of muscle and scar tissue from bullets, laser strikes, shivs, and brands. He won most of his fights by sheer mean. Even Riddick didn't want to fight him, more out of a dislike of unnecessary harm to his person than out of any fear of death. He had no idea why Fantine had agreed.  
  
Not that he had real worries that she'd be killed in the fight. She was too much of a survivor, like him, to die. But for the first time since she'd started fighting he wasn't sure who would come out on top, and if she lost the chances were good that she'd be unmasked. And then it would probably be death by rape and torture if he didn't get her out of there before Scarface, his so-called friends, or the angry crowd got to her.  
  
It wasn't that he felt any sort of deep or lasting attachment to her. That was not only ridiculous, it was impractical in the Ursa Luna Slam. But apart from that and apart from their strange friendship and the good sex he felt a sort of proprietary (possessive) interest towards her. If anyone was going to get to kill her it would be him, and no one else. Period.  
  
Riddick drained the miraculously cool water from his cup and stood up, pushing the thoughts of carnage from his mind. She wouldn't get killed, and she wouldn't lose. Fantine had never lost a fight yet; he was actually looking forward to their own fight with a great deal of enthusiasm. She had to survive till then, at least. And until then, he'd go and watch her kick the ever-living fuck out of the poor bastards who were dumb enough to take her on.  
  
It wasn't like he had anything more entertaining to do, anyway.  
  


* * *

  
  
Lawson, and Keyes were leaning over the railing already when Riddick walked up. He shouldered his way in to where they stood, shouting with all the rest of the inmates present. Fantine wasn't even out yet, but Scarface was making a big production of his entrance. Riddick's lip twisted in a silent, derisive snarl. Showboating like that was a waste of time and energy, especially since his opponent wasn't even in the ring yet. Idiot.  
  
Fantine finally made her appearance. No swagger, not even a bounce to her step, just straight-up walking out and standing there. Her arms were loose at her sides, her hood pulled up and tight around her face. Not for the first time, he wondered how she saw with it around her head like that. Probably, he decided again, the same way she saw in the dark of the prison: with her other senses. Even without her bounce and flip to her step she looked as though she'd taken at least half the crowd. The applause for the Fury was no less than the applause for Scarface. He didn't seem to like that very much.  
  
"Yah! Kill him!" Keyes shrieked, Lawson not much behind.  
  
Their enthusiasm was infectious and the crowd was so big it was amazing that the three of them had actually carved out some breathing room for themselves. Riddick shouldered away some bystander who was trying to push him out of his viewing spot and glanced at either of his two companions.  
  
"This is it? They haven't even started yet?"  
  
"Are you kidding?" Lawson's eyes were gleaming almost as bright as Riddick's normal silver gaze. "With the reputation both of them have? Neither of them have gone down in a one-on-one. You saw what he did to me my first night here..." he gestured at Fantine. "It's going to be the fight of a lifetime."  
  
"Someone's lifetime, anyway." Riddick wasn't sure whether or not he liked the news. With that big a crowd, that much bloodthirst in the arena, the chances were increasing every moment that one of the two wasn't going to walk out of the ring under their own power. That was, if both of them made it out alive. He had faith in Fantine's ability to fight, but he wasn't sure he had that much faith in her body to keep up the pace Scarface would set.  
  
He didn't have time to worry about it anymore. The fight was on as Scarface abruptly stopped parading and charged Fantine, no artistry, straight out bull rush. Rather than simply dodge she jumped up and stretched out, kicking her shin straight into his throat. He went backwards but not down, not nearly as far as Riddick would have liked. It was most definitely on.  
  
They wove in and out of each other, taking their hits where they could get them. Scarface wisely didn't try to rush her again, but he did try every other intimidation tactic in the book, and a few even Riddick hadn't thought of. Ten minutes later Fantine had taken a few hits and her face was a little bloody from a cut to the forehead where she'd been slammed into the fence. Her eyes were alert, though, and she was starting to bounce from foot to foot. Scarface... well, it was almost impossible to tell how far gone he was. Riddick saw his chest heaving more, but that was it.  
  
"He's gonna kill him... he's gonna kill him." Keyes chanted gleefully. A shorter man with a receeding hairline, a quavery voice and a mouse-like tempermant, Joey Keyes could be surprisingly bloodthirsty at times. Usually, these were times involving his favorite ring fighters. Lawson and Riddick had met him over a cup of home-brew after one of Fantine's fights.  
  
"Probably," Riddick said, grinning more than usual as Fantine landed several quick punches to the back of the kidneys. It was always good to see her kick some ass.  
  
He caught the leaping axe-kick she delivered to Scarface's scarred face, but was distracted from the follow-up when Doc Wellers excused himself right into them. "Out of my way... get the hell out of my way... oof. Hi, Riddick, Lawson..."  
  
Riddick's eyebrows shot up even as he returned his attention to the ring. If the Doc was here, it meant that at least one other person took this fight deathly seriously. Doc only showed up to the fights he thought there was a chance of her losing, after Riddick had told him about her deception. He hadn't even had to ask why the Doc was there the first time. It helped, having a pet medic who wouldn't leak out her secret to the rest of the prison world. Ever since then the Doc had been keeping a closer eye on her than usual.  
  
"Shit..." said Doc Wellers in an uncharacteristic display of brevity and foulness. He sighed, wedging himself between Riddick and Lawson and settling in to watch the fight. "Too late... Riddick, can't you talk some sense into...?" He stopped barely in time. Riddick heard him mumbling something about self-preservation and stomped on the doctor's toes before anything else could come out. They all looked down into the ring; Fantine was making mincemeat out of Scareface.  
  
"Doc, I really don't think you need to worry," Riddick said, his voice dangerously low. He didn't want Lawson or Keyes finding out; he liked them, but he didn't know them well enough to trust them. If it hadn't been Fantine's secret he wasn't sure he'd've trusted her with it either. And now he was wondering if he hadn't been wrong to trust the Doc. Then again, he hadn't had much of a choice, either. Necessity had driven them both to Doc Weller: Riddick for his eyes and Fantine for her secret.  
  
"I need to ... er... talk to him... The Fury..." Doc improvised. "It's... oh dear."  
  
"What?" Riddick turned his attention back to the ring. Lawson had already turned away from the doctor by this point, and Keyes was ignoring them altogether. All four men were now staring at Fantine, who had gotten unlucky or careless. She wasn't bouncing anymore, and actually looked like she might be favoring a leg. Riddick stopped cheering, although Keyes was yelling for her to finish him off.  
  
"I told you..." the doctor warned, and Lawson glanced back at him.  
  
"Told him what?"  
  
"Never you mind."  
  
"Shut up, both of you..." Riddick leaned further forward. "I think... I think he's in trouble..." He had to fight to remember to call the Fury by the masculine pronoun. Damn the doctor for slipping up, and especially now. Scarface was closing in, arms out, moving side to side and slowly advancing, crab like. He threw enough hooks and jabs to keep Fantine on her toes, keep her from launching any more flying kick attacks. Of all the fighters, he was the first one to disable one of her legs, preventing most of her devastating attacks. Lucky or smart, Riddick wondered. Possibly both.  
  
Riddick had a bad feeling about the fight. "This isn't going to be..."  
  
Scarface darted forward ripped the hood back and around to strangle the Fury at the exact second the words left Riddick's mouth. Blonde hair sprang out, sticking straight up between the static electricity and the shortness of the haircut. Blue eyes flashed angrily. The entire crowd went quiet.  
  
"Hol-ee..."  
  
"...shit..."  
  
"Oh god..."  
  
Riddick was silent.  
  
In the one piece of luck they'd had all night, Scarface was actually struck dumb by the realization that his opponent was, in fact, a woman. He let go of the hood completely, freezing in the act of half-strangling the woman with her own fighting costume. Fantine seized the opportunity and raced out of his grip, bouncing off the opposite fence wall and using the momentum to land a solid kick to the man's stomach. The crowd stayed silent. She followed up with an old-fashioned knee to the groin, and slammed her joined fists into his face when he doubled over. Scarface fell over backwards and lay still. The crowd was so quiet Riddick thought he could hear his hair growing.  
  
"What's going..." Lawson started to ask.  
  
Fantine waited for a second, for Scarface to get up, for the crowd to make up their minds what had just happened, or maybe just to catch her breath. Then she ran out before anyone could stop her. Lawson and Keyes looked at each other, then at Riddick and Doc, who were both frowning grimly.  
  
"Okay..." Lawson said in deathly quiet tones. "Either of you want to tell me what the hell is going on?"  
  
The barely suppressed anger in Lawson's tone stung Riddick into action. Very few people in the stands had actually made it out of the arena yet; most of them were probably too shocked to do much more than gossip or scream. He pushed his way through the crowd, the other three close on his heels.  
  
"Later..." he snapped. First he had to find her.  
  
They followed him. He supposed he would have had to expect that. Running out of the arena like she had wasn't the best idea, at least not if she didn't have a pre-determined place to hide out until the craziness died down. Although that could take a while. He wasn't sure what the tenor of the audience was when he'd bolted out, for which he was cursing himself as he ran. He didn't know what they were likely to do.  
  
There would be those, he knew, who would take her femininity as an immediate challenge. Stupid men who thought below the belt and couldn't stand having a woman around who had kicked their asses in the ring. They'd be going after her, for sure. There would also be the kind who would see her as a hefty notch on their wall, a prize that they could parade around, someone who would bring status to their little feudal prison society. There were probably also those, he realized then, who had put himself or Fantine on their enemies list and ...  
  
"Riddick..."  
  
The doctor's voice chased that last thought out of his head. Fuck. "What is it, Doc?" He was leading the way, since he was the only one who could see... really see... in the darkness. He had to squint a couple times as they hit the more lighted areas, but he had the feeling she wasn't going to go near there.  
  
"Riddick, I think..."  
  
They had to stop. The Doc, much less used to physical activity than the other three, was starting to lose breath. Riddick paced back and forth with quick, fluid steps. He was getting more and more impatient by the second.  
  
"I think..." Doc Weller caught his breath finally. "I don't think she's in any danger. Not yet..."  
  
Lawson and Keyes were still glaring at both of them. "Would one of you like to explain what the hell's going on here?" Lawson snapped. Riddick whirled on him fast enough to make the red-headed man take several steps back, nearly tripping over the Doc. "Riddick... look, I'm not ..." He wasn't sure what to say. The bigger man had looked as though he was about to kill Lawson for a second there.  
  
"Pretty obvious, isn't it?" he growled finally, turning and staring down the hallway.  
  
"Fantine..." the Doc started to say, and then skipped right past the repetition. "She didn't want anyone to know. I had to know, of course, because I treated her injuries."  
  
"And Riddick?"  
  
There was something in Lawson's voice, something tight and hot. Riddick paused in mid-pace, turned to look at him. The man's face had turned as red as his hair, his jaw and fists clenched. He looked as though he was about to deck someone. _Jealous? Can't be._ Then again it would explain a lot, including Riddick's instinctive desire to keep as much of the more sexual parts of his relationship with Fantine as private as possible. Lawson continued.  
  
"How did Riddick get to be a part of this intimate little conspiracy..."  
  
"You know, if you..."  
  
"Riddick discovered her identity quite on his own," Doc Weller interceded before it could become an all-out fight. "The first day she arrived. When both of you first arrived, as I recall. Now if you don't mind, I think we'd better find her instead of fighting amongst ourselves, hmm?"  
  
Neither Riddick nor Lawson needed any further urging. Keyes fell back with the Doc, looking from one fighter to the other, nervous. Riddick couldn't really blame him. If it came down to a fight between those himself and Lawson, Keyes would probably be the worst off, since the Doc invited or incited the respect that came with age and an elite profession. He was just a high-voiced little sneak. The only thing going for him was that he didn't seem to have the hots for Fantine, as half the prison probably did by now. The thought made Riddick tear through the halls even faster.  
  
She wasn't in her pod. The Doc muttered something about guessing as much, but it just made Riddick madder. And more worried. They hadn't run across any mobs on their way here, nothing to indicate that she'd been captured and done to the way most of the women in the Slam were.  
  
"Where else would she go?" Lawson yelled. Riddick could have killed him for that.  
  
"Well, where else would she feel safe?"  
  
Everyone stared at Keyes as though he'd lost his mind. Doc Weller was the first one to charge out this time. "Of course..." he muttered. Riddick and Lawson were on his heels. "Of course. How stupid..."  
  
"Doc..."  
  
"Just follow me..."  
  
As winded as he'd been before, Doc Weller ran flat out now. Riddick had to work to keep up with him. The Doc was wheezing by the time they got to familiar territory, but it was all right. Riddick thought he knew what the older man had meant, now.  
  
He forced himself to be nonchalant as they past the lights around the door of his cell block. Wouldn't do to have the guards knowing something was up. Lawson, Keyes, and the Doc stayed back towards the door for a few minutes; Doc Weller had to get his breath back, and even Lawson was intimidated by the strength of the glare Riddick threw his way. Be damned if either of them were going to see what his pod looked like. He still wasn't sure whether or not it had been a good idea to invite Fantine back the first time, but once it was done he hadn't thought twice about bringing her there a second, third, fifth time.  
  
No extra guards, no extra people milling around in front. If she was there she'd made there unnoticed and unremarked. Not surprising; she was in and out of his pod all the time. But was she really there? Was the absence of riot and clamor an indication that she'd gotten out of the fighting arenas intact or...  
  
There was a lump in the blankets. A human-shaped lump, curled up around itself. From the sound of her breathing she was asleep, or at least dozing, but the second he slid the door back even as quietly as he could the rhythm changed. Good for her. She'd need senses like that to stay alive now. Now, everything had changed.  
  
"Hey..." he sat next to her on the bed, wondering what to do now.  
  
She sat up. "Hey." 


	6. Relax

"It's been a rough night..." he offered finally when she didn't say anything.  
  
Fantine was almost too tired to think clearly. She hadn't expected Scarface to try that old playground trick. She hadn't expected anyone to think of that, it usually required more brains than most of the bruisers in the arena fights had to try and kill someone with their own outfit, their own weapons. She hurt all over, both from the beating she'd taken and the running she'd done afterwards on an ankle that was probably at least sprained, if not broken. "Yeah..." she sighed ruefully; she just wanted to sleep so bad... "Yeah, it has."  
  
They sat there in uncomfortable silence for a couple minutes more. "I guess you got out okay, after..."  
  
"After the hood came off and everyone saw that the Emperor had no clothes? Yeah, pretty much. Everyone was so shocked that I was a woman that they didn't think to stop me." She dug the palms of her hands into her eyes, leaned back against the wall. "It's not tonight I'm worried about, it's tomorrow. What happens when people actually start thinking about what happened. They'll either love me to pieces or hate me and be out for my blood." She laughed bitterly. "We'll see what happens, I guess."  
  
He didn't seem sure how to respond to that. "For what it's worth, Lawson and Keyes don't hate you. They're kind of annoyed at me for not telling them, but not at you, for some reason."  
  
Fantine laughed again, less bitter this time. "I'm just too cute to stay mad at," she grinned up at him.  
  
"Something, anyway..." he gave her a wry look, which she interpreted as a sign that he still didn't know what to do with her. After all that time, all the conversation and fighting and sex, he still didn't know what to do with her. She wondered if she should be proud or worried.  
  
"You'll figure it out," she murmured, half to herself. She wasn't sure what to do with him, either.  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"Nothing."  
  
More uncomfortable silence. She wondered where the rest of the gang was, especially Doc Weller. It wasn't like him to wait this long – or at all – before barging in to check up on her after a fight. And usually he'd have a lecture for her about how dangerous it all was, and she'd make snide remarks about being a good girl and getting lollipops. If she was really irritated she'd comment on how he didn't tell Riddick to be more careful. Of course he didn't. For all that both of them were masters of the cool demeanor, she was much more brutally pragmatic than Riddick, who was inclined to give into whim a little too often. If she had ice water flowing through her veins, he had liquid fire.  
  
And after that thought, suddenly it was too much just to be sitting next to him. She flushed hot red in the darkness, stood up, and had to grab onto the bunk to keep from falling over from exhaustion and pain. Her breath hissed out between clenched teeth.  
  
"You need to see the Doc..." Riddick caught her even as she tilted downwards, not falling but definitely not staying upright either.  
  
"What was your first clue."  
  
"Don't get snappy." He chuckled. "You shouldn't have gone running out there anyway. I saw you limping."  
  
She shrugged. "Better run and make the ankle worse than stay and take what the crowd probably wanted to give me."  
  
"Good point." He was quiet for a second, and then he carefully pushed her back down onto the bunk. "Sorry."  
  
"Sorry... there's a word I haven't heard out of Richard Riddick's mouth very often..." she chuckled, and so did he. "Don't worry about it. Nothing to be sorry for, not from you, and we all knew it was going to happen sooner or later. I probably would have preferred the later, but..."  
  
"Mmm." A non-committal noise. He probably would have preferred later, too. Keep things simple. When he didn't say anything after that she glanced up at him. His expression was an unreadable kind of tight, his eyes reflecting the candlelight from far-off pods like a cat's. The shine job didn't help her trying to read his expressions any. "We were worried about you."  
  
"Why Richard," she smiled, teasing. She never called him by his first name, and he glanced at her in some mild startlement. One out-of-character remark deserved another. "I think that's the first I've ever heard you admitting to worrying about anyone."  
  
"Yeah, well, if you tell anyone I said that..."  
  
"I know, I know, you'll kill me." Fantine rolled her eyes and tucked her legs back up onto his bunk, then bit back a scream. She'd forgotten about her bad ankle again. "But before you do, could you get the Doc? No point in killing a weakened and wounded opponent."  
  
"Sure." He slipped off the bunk and out of his pod without further word.  
  
She tipped to one side and fell onto the semi-soft padding, exhausted. The fragments of conversation they'd just exchanged were finally starting to penetrate the fog around her mind, and she was more surprised than she expected that he'd been worried about her. _No, not that he'd been worried, that he'd actually come out and said so._ Riddick... none of them were really the kind to go all mushy on each other. The few words of tenderness either of them had exchanged were the generic sorts of endearments that seemed almost dutiful in bed, in the darkness. Never outside of sex.  
  
Then again, they'd never had a night quite like this one. Everything was different now; the rumors would be spreading like wildfire of her secret identity, the fight and the unmasking. If she was very lucky, no one would have been able to put a face to the woman who had appeared from under the Fury's hood. It would mean the end of her pit fighting days, at least in the most grueling arenas, but maybe that was all to the good. That one last fight with Riddick, and then maybe it would be time for her to retire as a fighter. Maybe. If she was lucky.  
  
If not...  
  
Riddick loomed up out of the darkness, so quickly that she sat up again and hissed in pain. Doc Weller pushed past the larger man at that noise and knelt down next to her, muttering something about fools and fighting. Behind Riddick she could see a familiar shock of red hair and worried eyes. Keyes probably wasn't far behind.  
  
"Ow!" Doc Weller had started to poke and prod at her injured ankle. "Jeez. Give a girl a little warning next time?"  
  
"It never ceases to amaze me," he snapped, "How you can be so brave and suffer all kinds of indignities and insults upon your bodies in the ring, and yet be so cowardly of a little recovery-room pain. If it hurts that much, don't get yourself into those damned fights."  
  
"I'm glad to see you too, Doc," she teased, apologetic and wondering what had gotten the Doc so worried. Had Riddick been more right than even he knew? Or were they all just anticipating the kind of trouble she was going to get now that she'd been revealed as a woman in a brutal man's world?  
  
"Well." The Doc made an indelicate snorting noise. "It's not broken, and you should thank your luck for that. Let's see the rest of you."  
  
Fantine shrugged and pulled her shirt off right then and there, just as Riddick was crossing over to sit next to her on the bunk. Keyes and Lawson gaped from the doorway, and as though he was wary of her naked flesh even Riddick changed course in mid stride and went to lean on the wall at the far end of the room. She tried not to laugh at the obvious discomfort in all three men at her matter-of-fact disrobing.  
  
"Oh, grow up. All of you. This can't be the first time you've seen a half- naked woman before."  
  
Doc Weller smacked her leg. "Don't tease them. They've had at least as bad a night as you have."  
  
Everyone gave him skeptical, quizzical looks for that remark, which he didn't clarify. Instead he poked and prodded around her ribs, listening to her breathing and scowling over any wincing she did. He shone a light in her eyes, checked her vision, asked her all the usual questions about dizziness or headaches. Fortunately, she thought, she'd actually managed to escape this fight without a concussion. Trade-off for the sprained or broken ankle, probably.  
  
"Well, Doc?" she asked finally. "Is the patient going to live?"  
  
"Not if she keeps this up. Put your shirt back on." He creaked to his feet. "That ankle's not broken, although from what I saw of the fight you should consider it a miracle that it's not crushed. You don't seem to have a concussion, although I'd still consider it advisable to stay awake for the next several hours, just in case. I'd like to get you back to the infirmary to tape up those ribs you've managed to neatly crack..."  
  
Lawson and Riddick both took a step forward.  
  
"... but I could probably manage to bring any equipment I'd need to patch you up back here."  
  
"Will you two stop hovering around me like someone's grandmother?" she snapped. The Doc looked over his shoulder and gave a short, sharp laugh. "Honestly. You'd think this was my first fight the way you two are acting. Settle the hell down or get the hell out."  
  
"Of _my_ pod?" Riddick asked, but there was amusement in his tone and he_ did_ seem to relax a little. Lawson nodded tightly, clearly still unhappy about something.  
  
"I'll leave her in the capable hands of the three of you, then?" Doc Weller asked, half-glaring around at the men. Lawson finally held up his hands, as if to indicate surrender, that he'd be on his best behavior. It was enough, apparently, for the Doctor. He nodded and left without further word. Fantine looked from Riddick, to Lawson, to the fidgeting Joey Keyes, and back again to Riddick. No one wanted to break the silence that seemed to choke them all. Fantine wasn't sure they could.  
  
"What..." she finally asked, and it came out strangled and thick. She tried again. "What happened after I left?"  
  
"Not much..." Keyes started, and nearly jumped at the sound of his higher- than-most voice in the darkness and uncomfortable silence. "Er. Not much, really. Everyone was shocked that it turned out to be you... I mean, that it turned out to be a woman... I mean..." he tried to recover, gave it up as a bad job and pushed on. "No one really said anything and then the Doc said he had to find you and Riddick just tore out of there like his feet were on fire and neither of us knew what was going on so we just came with..." he trailed off.  
  
Fantine smiled tiredly. "Thanks, guys." The words were out of her mouth before she thought, before she realized how much of an admission of feeling that was. None of them looked at her anymore.  
  
Doc Weller came back to a deathly quiet room that reeked of self-conscious embarrassment and simmering anger. Riddick was leaning against the same wall he'd gone to when Fantine had half disrobed. Lawson was hunched in the doorway and Keyes was jittering as though he wanted to be somewhere else. He waited until the Doc had cleared the doorway and knelt down beside Fantine before muttering something and scampering out of the pod, out of the cell block. All four of them stared after him for a second.  
  
"What the hell is wrong with all of you?" he muttered. Fantine just shrugged, trying to watch Riddick and Lawson at the same time. "Stay still." The Doc smacked her on the thigh again, and she was still.  
  
"I don't think you two should fight." Lawson finally spoke up when Doc Weller had all but finished binding up her ankle in a walking brace. She could barely feel her toes anymore, but at least the pain had gone down some. As always after one of her fights he refused to give her an anesthetic. It was her own damn fault she was in pain, he'd said, and maybe it would teach her a lesson. Never did, of course. It didn't matter. She hadn't been in enough pain to actually want the mind-fogging drugs.  
  
"What are you talking about, Lawson?" she asked, biting her lip as the Doc snapped the bandage shut. "What fight?"  
  
"Doc told me about this deal the two of you have going. This little crazy suicide pact..."  
  
_Suicide pact?_ she mouthed at Riddick. The large man only shrugged, expressionless.  
  
"This whole thing you two have. Fighting each other in the ring, what the hell is wrong with you?" He seemed to be mostly speaking to Riddick. "Isn't her life going to get tough enough now with everyone trying to get the one woman fighter in all the Ursa Luna Slam? I mean, isn't it going to be bad enough without you beating the crap out of her in public?"  
  
There was probably more to the tirade but it was cut off as Fantine shot to her feet, irritated beyond reason. Doc Weller whipped around, himself, staring at Lawson as though the man had grown a second head. "Lawson, are you really sure..." he started. She interrupted him.  
  
"Considering that so far I've managed to beat the crap out of you twice, and every other limp-dick cocksucker who's jumped into the ring with me, I don't see where you get off..." she glanced at Riddick and stopped that thought in mid-sentence, changing gears. "I'm fine, Nick. I've got a sprained ankle and a couple of cracked ribs, and so far the only thing I haven't had before is the sprained ankle. I'll be good to go in a week, and no one will know anything was ever wrong." She ignored Doc Weller, who was kneeling at her feet and shaking his head in mingled disgust and concern.  
  
"It's her choice, Lawson," the Doc said, although he was looking at Riddick when he spoke. "I wouldn't get in the way."  
  
"She tends to beat people up who get in her way." Riddick sounded more amused than anything else.  
  
"She's also in the room, if you'd care to remember that," Fantine snapped. All three men laughed, prompting more glares from her direction. The angry tension relaxed a little at the sound.  
  
"Stay off that foot for the next twelve hours or so," the Doc warned, standing up and pushing Fantine down as he did so. "I'll tape up your ribs, so stay out of fights..."  
  
She didn't look at him. She didn't look at any of them. The rebuke to stay out of fights was all very well as long as no one had recognized who the woman unmasked in the ring had been. As long as no one connected her with the strange events in the pit fight that night she'd be fine. She wouldn't be able to fight again in the pits without a different disguise, but she'd be fine. But if even a few people had seen her and recognized her from the stands, and if that word got around, there wasn't going to be any _stay out of fights_ for her. She was going to be fighting perhaps as often as every day for her life, for her health, for everything. That was the second-worst extreme of what could have happened, and it surfaced in her mind endlessly when she stopped to think about the consequences. It was enough to make her remember why she'd stopped thinking about consequences at all.  
  
The Doc seemed to have reached the same conclusion. He glanced at her with no little concern on his face, then to each of the men looming in opposite corners. Lawson seemed to deflate as his annoyance and – well, whatever had been making him scowl so furiously seemed to have disappeared. Riddick was impassive as usual, but there was what might have been a clench to his jaw and fists that said he wasn't happy with the situation either. Something she missed, some look she didn't catch or maybe just the unspoken bond of men carried the message through. First Lawson, then Riddick nodded. It seemed to satisfy Doc Weller, who finished taping her ribs and stood up without a word.  
  
"Make sure she doesn't go to sleep for a while. Or walk on that foot," was all he said, and then he walked out.  
  
Fantine started to call him back, wondering if she really wanted to be in an eight by ten by eight foot space with Richard Riddick and Nick Lawson. Too late, though: he was already down the hall and probably out of the cell block by the time she'd decided she wanted a chaperone. It was adolescence all over again. And she was too tired to deal with them.  
  
"Get out," she muttered.  
  
Neither of them listened.  
  
"Out!"  
  
Riddick just smirked. "It's my pod, kiddo," he murmured, which both entranced her and infuriated her. Lawson shook his head and moved over to tuck her into the bunk.  
  
"Lie back..." he said as he gently tried to push her down. "You shouldn't go to sleep but that's no reason to sit there like you're going to leap up and run off any second."  
  
Men were baffling. "Weren't you two about to kill each other a second ago?"  
  
Identical shrugs. "We got over it," Lawson said. Riddick gave her a grin that was full of teeth.  
  
"You two are insane, you know that?" she muttered, but she allowed herself to be laid back and propped up in the bunk with pillows, a blanket, a spare shirt that smelled of sweat and Riddick. It was just distracting enough to keep her from noticing the glances that the two men were exchanging. "Fucking insane..."  
  
"Sure we are..." Riddick grinned, deliberately patting her on the head like a child. She whipped her head around and snapped playfully at his fingers.  
  
"Get some rest, okay?" Before she could react Lawson had leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. She sat up, meaning to do... something. Even she wasn't sure what she wanted to do. She had no idea how to react to that. "Take care of her..." Lawson was still talking. She was still trying to figure out what the hell was going on. He left before she could say anything.  
  
"Men are crazy," she muttered finally, settling back onto the bunk. Her opinion was only confirmed by how solicitous they were being. Apart from the Doc, they never fussed over her after a pit fight. Never. She would have expected them to fuss over Lawson before they fussed over her; Riddick, of course, would never have tolerated it. Keyes never got into the pit fights; he even tried to stay out of the normal fights in the canteens or ball courts. She'd thought she was becoming just one of the boys, albeit one of the boys who routinely slept with...  
  
Riddick.  
  
He hadn't moved from the wall, not even when Lawson had gotten strangely close. She glanced over at him. "Aren't you going to tell me I should be taking it easy, too?"  
  
"Would you listen to me if I did?" his voice was rumbling, amused. The low and velvet-smooth quality that he got when he was relaxed and even in a bit of a playful mood. At least she wasn't going to listen to a testosterone- driven tirade. Although she still wasn't sure what all the territorial anger had been about, earlier.  
  
"Probably not. Any more than you would listen to me if you were sitting here with bandages cutting off your circulation and I was leaning over against the wall playing post."  
  
He chuckled. The sound teased at her senses like hot oil over her skin. Of all the times to use _that_ voice, he had to pick after one of the most grueling fights she'd gotten into since getting sent to the Slam.  
  
"Riddick, if you're going to play the Dark Seducer, at least get over here so I don't have to hobble to you to feel you up?"  
  
Another chuckle, but he pushed off the wall and didn't so much walk as swagger over to the bunk. She wasn't sure what to expect. She'd half expected, knowing that it took at least a minimal effort to put that kind of smooth, liquid sex tone into his voice, that he'd do something passionate and a little raunchy. She definitely hadn't expected him to tuck her in. "Relax," he told her. "Just relax."  
  
"Riddick..." she wasn't sure what was going on. Hadn't been sure since Keyes had bolted for the door, maybe even before that. Her whole leg was throbbing now, as was her torso. It didn't hurt to breathe, but it wasn't far from it. She wanted to ask him questions, but she didn't know what were the right ones to ask. "Riddick..."  
  
"Relax, Fantine..." he spoke her name almost like an Aquiline. "Just lay back. Just relax. You can figure everything out in the morning."  
  
He was the only man she'd ever known who had that quality of voice, that low and soothing tone that she could wrap around herself like a comforting blanket. His huge and muscled hand stroked over her peach-fuzz hair, delicate and light. His other arm slid around her shoulders and she relaxed into the embrace out of habit. How long had they been sleeping together now? Time had started to blur shortly after she'd gotten thrown down in the giant oubliette of a prison; she didn't know. It felt like forever. And she hadn't even been in the Slam that long. Or had she? That, too, felt like forever. She didn't sleep, but her thoughts began to settle into fuzzy- headed stillness. Slowly, finally, she could relax. 


	7. Violation

A/N: This is where the story earns its rating. Descriptions of gang rape and its aftermath will ensue for the next several chapters, not graphic but (if I've written correctly) emotionally intense. If this bothers you or you feel you might be triggered by these themes, I would advise you to stop reading now.

* * *

The hallways were quiet so early in the morning, and especially in the areas surrounding the infirmary. It had helped, a little, that they'd completely thrown the fight in the end. They knew each other too well by now, and neither of them had any sort of advantage in cleverness. Riddick's advantage of sheer strength was matched by Fantine's dexterity, speed, and her willingness to make ruthless advantage of physics. They'd discussed it the night before, what would happen if it went on and it didn't look like either of them was going to win. It had come down to a coin toss.  
  
He smiled a little, remembering how she'd teased him. Would it hurt his masculine pride, she'd asked, losing to a tiny woman like her? He'd responded, and responded truthfully, that any hurt her sex would do to his ego was balanced by the fact that she was a damn good fighter and a worthy adversary. She'd made some crack about syllables and ice, leading to more teasing and playfully aggressive sex afterwards. But it was still true. Apart from their bed (or wall, or closet) activities, he found himself more and more slipping into a mindest wherein she was just one of the guys.  
  
At least that seemed to be the prevailing opinion in the Slam. There had been little backlash from her unmasking, although people had been noticeably tense when she'd walked up and matter-of-factly laid the whole Riddick-Fantine fight at the feet of those loosely organizing the pit fights. They hadn't wanted to deal with her as both a woman and a fighter. True to her own style and grace, she'd left them no choice. The ordinary nature of the fight seemed to calm them down; Riddick had actually shown more skin than she had, wearing his usual muscle shirt and trous, she in her sweats. Just another night in the ring.  
  
No backlash. Maybe no one had recognized her, or maybe they just cared less than everyone had worried about. Either way, it was something of a relief.  
  
They'd have to come up with a new drama now. Some new secret, something else to pass the time. He was a little startled to realize that he'd missed the intrigue of keeping her secret, the constant excitement of it. Was he starting to become that desperate for mental stimulation that even that kind of simple game was exciting? He wondered if it should worry him. It never had before, but then he'd never done a lot of things before. Maybe he should worry. Maybe it was just the nature of the Slam.  
  
And then a few moment's later he wondered, laconically, why he'd even bothered worrying. It wasn't anything big, just something in the attitude of the guards, their stance or faces that told him something was going on in the supposed men's canteen. Something big, maybe, or maybe just some daily amusement. He was bored enough and still awake that he decided to take a look.  
  
The guards glanced at each other as he went past. For a second he almost thought they were going to stop him. Odd.  
  
There was, as he'd expected, a crowd of people in the canteen. At first he couldn't see what was going on, couldn't hear above the raucous and encouraging cries. There was the smell of sweat and sex in the air, telling his instincts before his mind was able to put words to actions. He knew what was going on, and it figured. There was one of them a week, just about. The only question this time was who.  
  
It took him longer than he would have expected to push his way past the crowd and into a position where he could see what the hell was going on. He was getting more than his usual share of fearful looks, which should have told him something from the outset. The expression on the canteen guards' face should have told him something. Their presence certainly had; the only canteen that had any regular guard was the women's, except when something highly illegal was going on in any of the others. All the signals were adding up to something, and he was just able to put it together enough to know that his mind didn't want to think about whatever it was.  
  
Riddick couldn't see her at first. The giant currently taking his turn had practically covered her entire body with his, heaving and making grunting little piggish noises. Someone tapped the man on the shoulder; someone else asked Riddick if he wanted a turn. He turned to look at the man, his face gone slack, and whoever it was shrank away so fast that Riddick didn't even get a good look at him.  
  
The giant pulled out, pushed off, not even bothering to pull up his pants. He looked around at the assemblage of hostile, dull-eyed inmates, wondering why everyone had gone so quiet.  
  
"So, who was ne—"  
  
Riddick was on top of the man and pounding his head into the metal table before he'd even remembered crossing the intervening ten feet. The first few seconds of violence were a blur, and when he realized the man had stopped moving he continued to pound his head into the table anyway, what the hell. The giant had been (even taller than Riddick) on his girl, his woman, and there was just no excuse for that sort of behavior. Someone pulled him off.  
  
"Look, man, I know you're --"  
  
The next man didn't fare as well, either. By this time, though, Riddick had regained enough of his senses to be able to fight tactically, and he had the table affording some kind of meager protection at his back. And he always carried a shiv or two in a pocket. No artistry, no ceremony, he stabbed at arms, shoulders, legs, throats, whatever he could reach. The other hand punched, gouged, squeezed. After the first few minutes he'd managed to clear a wide berth around himself.  
  
"What the hell are you doing?" one man screamed. But he was bleeding profusely from a hole in his shoulder, so he didn't matter much. The other one, the one who looked as though he still had a spark or two of intelligence and who was hanging back, waiting for an opening. He was more trouble.  
  
"Come on, man," he said in the tones of someone who's trying to be reasonable to a madman, "Is she really worth it? I mean, come on. She's not _that_ good."  
  
She. Oh right. The point of this whole exercise, the focus of the conflict was still there. He spared a glance at her, then buried his blade to the hilt in the throat of the man who'd tried to take advantage of the momentary distraction. It bought him a few extra minutes and an extra foot, total, of radius.  
  
Fantine St. Germain... and he finally remembered where he'd heard the name before, too. Of all the times... she had curled up around herself on the bench, trying to make herself as small as possible. There was no awareness in her eyes, only that thousand-mile stare... he'd seen it in the eyes of other people sometimes, helping out the Doc in the infirmary. The fragments of her clothing... there wasn't much left, only rags... were clutched around her in white-knuckle fists as though they could protect her. She was the most pitiful sight he had seen in the Ursa Luna Slam, all the more so because it was so at odds with the woman he knew. Two different women, they had to be. Two different creatures.  
  
He made no threats. He didn't have to; his reputation and the fact that it looked as though he'd killed at least three men already spoke louder than any threats he could make. Two more were on the ground and suspiciously unmoving. It was enough to earn him the time to pick her up in the crook of one arm, awkwardly. The other still held the shiv low and ready for use.  
  
"Move."  
  
They moved. They didn't have a choice, not with the silver-eyed demon in front of them. He had all the advantages at that point: intimidation, sight awareness, strength and skill. For all that he was encumbered by a cringing wreck of a woman he was still badder and better than any of them, and they knew it.  
  
The guards were gone by the time he got out of the room. Some extra sense they'd developed by working in the Slam had told them it was time to leave. To scramble back to whatever hidey hole they lived in when they weren't guarding the women's canteen, the exits, or the other few places that the guards actually bothered to stand post.  
  
Riddick put the shiv away without even bothering to clean it and shifted her to a more comfortable position, cradled in his arms. She didn't seem to notice he was there.  
  
He hadn't meant to start running, but he found himself going full-tilt along the corridors. _At least I can see _flickered through his mind and was gone before he'd turned the next corner. His feet knew the way to the infirmary better than his head did at the moment. He found himself kicking and pounding at the door, although not shouting. He didn't know why he wasn't shouting. He didn't even know why he was making such noise.  
  
"All right, all right, I'm..."  
  
Doc Weller took one look at them both and pushed through the main infirmary room, leading Riddick towards the back. It was supposed to be a quarantine room but so few people in the Slam came down with anything really contagious that the Doc tended to sleep there when things were really busy. He gestured for Riddick to lay her down on the bed, which the murderer did, with a gentle touch that surprised even him.  
  
Once she was on the bed and officially in the Doc's care he found he could breathe again. He could think. It was a relief.  
  
"What happened?"  
  
Riddick opened his mouth to tell him and found he couldn't. He'd killed more people than he could conveniently count and he couldn't say one simple four-letter word.  
  
But the Doc wasn't talking to him. "Fantine..." He was talking to her, gently, carefully, even as he examined her with brisk thoroughness. "What happened?"  
  
For some reason that angered Riddick almost more than finding the mass of men on top of _his_ woman. "What the fuck do you think happened? She was fucking raped!"  
  
It came out before he thought about it. Now they were all forced to confront the reality of the situation. Doc Weller didn't look at all surprised, perturbed, or even changed by the word. For some reason Riddick thought he should have been. Fantine only curled up tighter, and that was more terrifying than any screaming or raging could have been. She should have been outraged, furious, fighting. She wasn't. It was unnatural, and it made him afraid. He hated being unreasonably afraid.  
  
"Richard..." No one ever called him that. "Why don't you sit down."  
  
He did. It struck him then, and late, that he should have been expecting this. Come to think of it he had been expecting this from the moment she'd been unmasked. Had been worried about it, actually. But he hadn't thought of that particular cause for this particular effect until just then. And if (it came on the heels of that thought like a chill of cold water down the back) he was that shaken up about what had happened, how was Fantine dealing with it? Not very well, from the look of it.  
  
He watched the doctor examine her. She was more beaten up than he'd noticed in the heat of the moment, and then running to the infirmary. He couldn't even remember why he'd run to the infirmary; what did he know about rape? He didn't commit it, there were enough willing women around in any place he'd been to that he didn't need to, and why bother anyway? And he'd never been close enough to a woman that she'd confide in him about a rape experience. The few rape victims he'd known hadn't survived...  
  
That thought was pushed away as quickly as it surfaced. No point in dwelling on the past.  
  
Except it resurfaced despite his best efforts, and in worrying forms. Would Fantine survive the attack? Part of him scoffed at the notion that she would do anything other than go back and kill her attackers in some brutal and dramatic fashion. Part of him reminded him in gibbering sentence fragments how fragile she looked in the harsh light of the doctor's office (at least it was harsh to his eyes). Mostly he just stared, numb. He understood rape, the need for it, but only on a detached level. Now it had come to someone he knew, someone he thought of as his, and he found himself needing to understand so much more, and he couldn't.  
  
She was talking now. Clinical, detached, she was describing what had happened as though she was a speaking computer reciting a bit of history. Her eyes never wavered from the thousand-yard stare.  
  
"All right..." Doc Weller said finally, gently. "All right, Fantine. That's enough."  
  
She fell silent almost immediately, unmoving.  
  
"Is she going to be okay?" he blurted out, not entirely sure whether or not it was a stupid question. Physically, she didn't look as though she'd taken any damage she wouldn't recover from, eventually. Hell, she'd looked worse after one of the pit fights. Everything else... Riddick didn't know rape trauma, but he was all too aware of internal, emotional scarring. She looked like she was going to have to develop a whole lot of it. And in a hurry. It wasn't, after all, as though they were going to pardon her offenses and ship her out of the Slam just because she was raped. That sort of thing went on there all the time. And once you started becoming a victim, Riddick knew, you could never really stop.  
  
"I don't know," the Doc sighed. "Honestly, I don't know. I think a lot of that will depend on..."  
  
Riddick had stopped listening at _I don't know._ Doc Weller saw that, and trailed off. Fantine had curled up on herself again and was scratching at her arms with her nails, as though she wanted to tear her skin off. He made a strangled noise. "Doc... make her stop..." He didn't want to watch this. He was 6'2", two-twenty pounds of muscle and mean, and he couldn't watch a tiny woman whimper and writhe in the aftereffects of rape. It would have been humiliating if it hadn't been so immediate. Doc Weller just looked at him until finally Riddick remembered that he was bigger and stronger than she was. He practically leaped over, pinned her arms to her side, and she started to scream.  
  
"Not like that!" the Doc slapped him on the arm, hard enough that it stung. Riddick had already let her go after she started screaming, though.  
  
"What? What the hell do I do?"  
  
Doc Weller gave him a look of mingled disgust and resignation, pulling the screaming wreck of the woman he'd known once into his arms and soothing her like a child. She stopped screaming, but she didn't seem to recognize who he was or where she was, or that she was out of danger.  
  
"I can't keep this up forever, you know," the Doc informed him. "I need to get semen samples and match them against..." There was more technical stuff, mostly having to do with exams he needed to conduct. Riddick only half heard what the Doc was saying. He was trying to think of something useful he could do, anything, and coming up short. And then the Doc was slapping him and he reacted out of instinct, grabbing the man's wrist. "Riddick!"  
  
"What?!"  
  
"Take care of her while I conduct the exams."  
  
Riddick stared at the Doc stupidly until the other man turned away to get his instruments. He didn't know how to proceed; he didn't even know how to begin. One hand reached out almost of its own accord, touching her arm. She felt ice cold.  
  
"Dammit." Doc Weller grabbed Riddick by the arm and tugged him to a corner of the room. His voice was low, funereal. "I need your help, Riddick. And I need you to snap out of whatever fog you're in. _She_ needs your help. If it bothers you to be comforting, don't think of it as comfort. Think of it as giving her an anchor to pull her way back to this world. Think of it as post-traumatic stress disorder if it makes you feel better, but think of it instead of thinking of your own shock that this happened. You knew it was likely, you even warned her of it. Now it's happened, I need your help to help her deal with it. I need you to be together for her, because I'm going to be poking and prodding her and bringing back the memories she's trying very hard to suppress right now. I'm going to be dragging her back into that hell you and I can only visit in nightmares, and I need you to remind her that there is a way out."  
  
It made sense. He clung to the logic with all the ferocity of a trapped tiger, running the words over and over again in his mind until they made sense in plain English. Riddick nodded.  
  
"Good." The Doc made some sort of disgusted noise and turned back to his instruments. "Rutting bastards." Riddick froze in mid-step, startled by the hatred in the doctor's voice. "Nothing better to do than hurt, maim, or kill each other. No sense of their own pride or identity, no way to be a man other than to force their manhood on someone else. Stupid, bloody bastards."  
  
"Doc...?" he made the one syllable a question.  
  
"You've seen their handiwork, Riddick. You've been in here often enough. Who do you think half the victims are?" He shook his head. "Never mind. Just ... mind her."  
  
She was scratching at her arms again, alternating between clutching her rags further around herself and trying to peel her skin from her body. There were words there, too, but she was babbling in her native Aquiline, of which Riddick could only approximate the accent and a few choice curses. He wondered what she was saying. He had the feeling it was essential, important, and he was missing it.  
  
Maybe Doc Weller spoke her language. Maybe he could translate later. He sat on the bed behind Fantine and pulled her into his arms, trying to pretend it was just another night in the Slam. He wasn't sure what kind of exams the doctor would need, he hadn't been paying attention, but he thought he had a pretty good idea anyway. As much as the doctor had been berating him, Riddick wasn't exactly a stranger to the seamier side of prison life. "Hey..." he found himself speaking, awkward. "Hey. It's ok. It's just me. Just the Doc. It's just me."  
  
Doc looked about as grim as he'd ever seen the man, leaning forward. Riddick didn't want to see this, and tucked his head down to Fantine's shoulder without the slightest hint of shame. Almost as an afterthought he slid to one side and pulled her gently to his shoulder, so she wouldn't have to see it either. It was almost enough. She did scream, and she writhed and kicked as much as she could, but he was just plain bigger than she was. He tried to make it an embrace and not a restraint, but he just wasn't sure how much of her remembered that he was Riddick, familiar, friend, and not one of the faceless attackers.  
  
The first part was bad enough. It was over after an excruciatingly long set of minutes, and Riddick actually relaxed. And then the Doc started to turn her and he didn't want to see this, didn't even want to be in the same room. His eyes, already squinted, closed tight. A tear or two of his own joined the flood streaming down Fantine's cheeks.  
  
"It's over, Riddick," the Doc said finally from somewhere a long ways away and down a tunnel filled with water. "It's all over, you two."  
  
"Thanks..." He wasn't sure what he was thanking Weller for.  
  
The Doc was watching them both for a little while as he put his tools away. Even curled as he was almost all the way around Fantine, Riddick could feel the other man's eyes on his back. He wasn't looking over his shoulder, though. He'd pulled her into his arms and wrapped around her as though trying to make up for his inability to protect her earlier. Fragments of earlier conversations came back to haunt him: teasing, laughing, easy talk. She wasn't even talking now, or at least she wasn't talking to anyone in the room. And it was his fault, really. He'd dropped his guard, he'd seen it coming and he hadn't done a damn thing to stop it. Animal instinct, everything in him told him, _shame, shame on you._ He'd failed to protect what was his. He'd failed to protect her.  
  
"Riddick."  
  
The Doc was talking again. He had to listen. "What."  
  
Weller palmed open the bathroom door. "Get her into the shower. She wants to get clean, that's why she's scratching herself like she was. I'll get something for her to put on after, but you get her into the shower and help her scrub down. Don't let her break the skin, but don't be surprised if she's in there till she turns pink. And whatever you do, don't let her alone. She needs to remember that not all big strong men are attackers, and she needs to remember..." he seemed to change what he was going to say in mid- sentence, "...that the world isn't all nightmares and sharp edges. That there is still tenderness and care."  
  
In any other situation the use of the word 'tenderness' as applied to Richard Riddick would have been laughable. It didn't seem funny anymore.


	8. What Now

Riddick needed out of this prison. He needed out of this hellhole, this confinement, this goddamn rat's warren with too many places a person could hide and jump out at someone else with a shiv and cut their throat in the darkness. The DNA results weren't back yet, and they wouldn't even list all the offenders. He wanted them dead. He wanted every last person who'd been in that room dead.  
  
She was safe for now, at least. Doc had her in the infirmary, would keep her until he could come and collect her and take her to bed. And she was starting to talk again, although she still barely seemed as though she saw anyone else in the room. Disturbing.  
  
Equally disturbing were the Doc's words of earlier, reinforced after he'd finally crawled out of the shower with her dragging along behind him. Had he really seen these effects and behaviors before, and never recognized them? Rape was one of the staples of prison life, like bad food and callous guards and the nightly pit fights he'd enjoyed watching up until a few days ago. But it had never really touched him. He'd made enough of a reputation the first day by killing the first person who'd tried to push him around, just beat the man into a bloody pulp. The second one got a shiv in the belly; he was still alive, although he had a shitbag permanently attached to his hip. One after another, they'd gotten the message before it had ever come down to trying to get Richard B. Riddick up against a wall.  
  
He surrounded himself with people who were just as mean as he was, or so different that the normal rules didn't apply. Doc was an example of the latter, Lawson and Fantine examples of the former. At least she had been, until she'd been revealed as a woman taking on a man's world on their terms. Men didn't tolerate that kind of thing. He'd known that, he'd known it instinctively, and he'd still let her go through with it. Now he was starting to think he should have just stopped her after her first melee pit fight.  
  
But she wouldn't have tolerated it. He knew that now, and he'd probably known it then. She was still damn lucky she hadn't been outed and raped right there in the opening melee. The second day – his mind raced, trying to figure out the whys and wherefores of everything – the second day she had been labeled as his. They'd both even laughed about it at the time. Nicole, trying to piss a circle around what she thought was hers. And he'd walked in and completely upset her plans, but he was preferable, Fantine had said. He knew better than to try and claim her for his own.  
  
It didn't matter. Nicole had spread the word in a day: Fantine belongs to Riddick, hands off. And as cold and troublesome a bitch as she could be, Nicole had been useful in that respect. She'd kept the predators from circling with just the rumors of territory. For a while. Until Fantine had been outed and then it was open season on the freak. The one person to challenge custom and culture.  
  
"You broke the rules..." Even Riddick acknowledged it, although he thought the rules were bullshit at the best of times. Not just the Slam's rules, anyone's rules. The only rule that mattered was survival. But here, survival meant following the rules or not getting caught. And she had gotten caught. "You broke the goddamn rules!"  
  
His fist made a loud, hollow noise as it slammed against the canteen wall.  
  
Riddick stood there for a long time before he finally went in. Keyes and Lawson were there, as he'd known they would be. It was breakfast time, or as close to it as it ever got. He'd lost track of how many hours he'd been awake.  
  
"Hey, there you are. We didn't see you after..." It didn't take too many steps forward for Lawson to see the stony lack of expression on the bigger man's face. "What?"  
  
"She's in the infirmary." They rarely used her name when she wasn't there. Only one woman was so important, so comfortable they took her for granted. "She got wolfpacked in the canteen."  
  
Of both the other men's reactions, it was Keyes who surprised Riddick the most. First the flush of anger, and then the pallid whiteness of fear and recognition. Lawson only stared at him in shock, with which Riddick was all too familiar. It had been impossible for him to believe, too, and he'd seen it.  
  
"No..." Lawson shook his head. "You can't..."  
  
"I was there, Lawson. I saw it. I had to get her to the Doc..."  
  
"She couldn't..."  
  
"Of course she could..." Keyes, little Joey Keyes, spoke up. His voice was more forceful than they'd ever heard, and bitter, and very hard. "Of course she could. All they needed was a reason. Enough bodies will get to anyone if they want you bad enough."  
  
Both men stared at him, but Keyes didn't say anything further. Riddick just went over to the wall and punched out a meal, quick and jerky movements displaying not only his anger but also confusion and shock.  
  
"What happened?" Lawson finally asked, having worked his way through the fact that his friend, the strongest woman he knew, had been attacked. "How..."  
  
"I don't know." Riddick sat back down and closed his hands into fists. "I walked by the other canteen and there were guards outside..."  
  
"There are _never_ guards outside..."  
  
"I _know._ And they didn't look happy to see me. I went in..." There wasn't any more. It stuck in his throat even as the memories flashed through his vision. He hadn't wanted to see that. He hadn't wanted it to happen. _Stupid_, he berated himself, _of course you didn't want it to happen_. But he hadn't wanted to see it happen either, and he felt more than a little ashamed because of that.  
  
"Who?"  
  
Of course that was Lawson's next question. And Riddick didn't remember a single face in the room. "I don't know who. I'm going to find out, though." The Doc would tell him. Thoughts of how the Doc would find out bled into thoughts of the exam. How she'd twisted and writhed as the Doc had done arcane things to her that he couldn't even watch. To say he'd never seen her like that before was to say the center of a sun was a little warm. It was incomprehensible, repulsive, terrifying.  
  
"Good..." Lawson nodded softly. "And you said she's with the Doc?"  
  
"Yeah. He's got her in the quarantine room, away from the insanity." The infirmary was usually a mess, with poor sanitation by the standards of any hospital even though it was clean by the standards of the prison. There was always at least one person screaming their life away. The quarantine room was soundproof; it even had its own separate air system. It wasn't a permanent solution but it was a good place to put her after the attack. Some place where she wouldn't be subject to loud noises, screaming. The jerky movements, the thousand-yard stare, they stuck in his mind like a blood stain that wouldn't come off. In the quarantine room she could rest.  
  
"Good..." Lawson was nodding. "Good idea. She'll need... some place quiet. Some place safe." It was an echo of his own thoughts, but instead of making him feel better that he'd found some agreement it only made him more ashamed.  
  
"She should have been safe here. She can take on any ... she took on the whole fucking lot of you her first night here. She should have been safe..."  
  
Keyes was shaking his head. "You don't get it. You just... she wasn't safe. The second that hood came off she was fresh meat." He sounded frustrated; more than anything he sounded as though he wanted one of them to ask why. So Riddick obliged.  
  
"What are you talking about?"  
  
"She... the fighting. Women don't fight in the pit fights, they don't fight in any of the major arenas, you know that. You both do. What did you think was going to happen, they'd cheer her on and praise her skills and hail her as the next Jennet Lane? This isn't the real world, this isn't even the military. No one's equal in here no matter how much we like to think that the only bottom line is power. The second, the very second that hood came off the first word that went through everyone's mind, the first name for her was 'freak.' They wanted to bring her down, to make her pay, to show her that she couldn't get away with it. And they did."  
  
"Broke the fucking rules..." Riddick muttered. He'd told himself as much a few minutes ago. And at the same time. "That doesn't matter. That shouldn't matter. She's worth any ten of them..."  
  
"Any hundred? Any two hundred? Riddick, you don't get it. If they want you, they're going to get you. And half the fucking Slam wanted her. So they took her, plain and fucking simple. The only reason you haven't been taken by now is because you're not unusual. You're not special, you're not worth the trouble it would take. And up until she got put on display in the ring, neither was she."  
  
Neither of the other men didn't know what to say to that. Keyes... little Joey Keyes, they'd thought of him. He'd never survive a direct fight unless his back was to the wall and a shiv was in his hand, and even then the odds weren't good. He hardly ever raised his voice to any of the other three, staying in the background for the most part. He'd never asserted himself like this before, never exploded. Now he was white-faced, angry, belligerent. They didn't understand. They didn't know what to do.  
  
"So... what do we do?" Riddick asked, more by way of asking what Keyes wanted them to do, trying to figure out what had triggered that outburst.  
  
Joey closed his eyes, shook his head, looked as though he wanted to scream. He stood up so violently that the bench squealed back, rocking Lawson nearly off the metal slab. The palms of his hands dug into his eyes as he paced back and forth. "God, Riddick..." Exhausted, exasperated. "God..."  
  
He felt stupid, and Richard B. Riddick didn't like to feel stupid. There was something he wasn't getting here, something that was eluding him about Keyes on a rampage and Fantine in the infirmary. It was a blank spot in his mind, something that he kept sliding around but couldn't look at directly. Insulting to think that he couldn't face anything directly, head on. Lawson was staring at Joey Keyes in abject horror. What had happened that was so horrible? What _else_ had happened? He wasn't sure he wanted to know.  
  
"Joey..." Lawson started. Riddick didn't even know who he was talking to at first.  
  
"Don't."  
  
Lawson shut up. They all stared at each other, Riddick and the red-head over the table, Keyes pausing in mid-pace and still looking pallid and harried.  
  
"What now?"  
  
Keyes just stared at Lawson, but didn't give him the same abrupt treatment he'd given Riddick. "Take care of her. Keep an eye on her, take care of her. It's going to be a long time before..." He didn't specify. Riddick filled in what he thought was the rest, before everything goes back to normal again. "She's strong. Resilient. You can take care of her, make sure nothing else, nothing worse happens. Keep an eye on her, make sure she doesn't do anything stupid. Maybe she'll come out of this better..." He didn't finish that sentence either.  
  
"How?" That brought Riddick back to an earlier revelation. Remembering how he'd tried to help, and she'd just started screaming. "How..."  
  
"I don't know. You just have to wait and see. And pay attention. God..." Keyes laughed, and it wasn't funny. "You have to pay attention. Pay close attention. She won't want to talk about it. She won't tell you anything, and you can't drag it out of her. You just have to wait and see."  
  
Lawson was nodding as though it made sense to him. "We can walk her just about everywhere. Keep an eye on her that way, I guess for the rest of it we'll just have to... I don't know. Just hang around, like you said. We can take it in shifts, she can stay in the infirmary with Doc Weller if ... it's not like we have anything better to do..." That was the wrong thing to say, somehow. Keyes threw the man a killing glare. "We'll take care of her."  
  
Joey Keyes shook his head. "You'll figure it out," he muttered, although Riddick still wasn't sure what he was missing. He looked up, found Keyes staring at him as though expecting something of him. He hated that. Keyes blinked, and the look was gone. "Go. Get out of here, go to bed. You look like shit."  
  
She looked worse. "Thanks," Riddick muttered. "Doc wanted me to pick her up, stay with her the night. I guess I'll head back to the infirmary, then."  
  
"Your pod or hers?"  
  
It was one of those subjects they'd managed to skirt around so often in conversation, rarely if ever talking about it, and Riddick was actually surprised Joey had brought it up. But he didn't have the energy to get upset at the smaller man, even if Lawson was staring at them both as though he expected a fight to break out any second.  
  
"Mine, probably. Quieter there."  
  
"Okay." Joey nodded. "We'll come get you tomorrow morning. You both need your rest..."  
  
Riddick nodded. Anything, at this point, to get away from the strangled feeling of Joey's words and the half-knowledgeable, half-helpless look from Lawson. Part of him was berating himself for being so stupid, even now. He'd expected that they'd go off and slaughter the offenders together, and everything would be okay. He'd really expected that. His mind now made mockery of the idea by presenting him with the though that they could all go back like savages and show Fantine the heads of her attackers on spikes. It didn't work that way, he knew better. But he'd still hoped.  
  
"See you tomorrow," he muttered, and made a quick exit. Maybe Doc would have found a way to make it all simple, a miracle cure for life. Maybe, more realistically, he'd have something to help them all sleep.

* * *

She was going to prison, no doubt about that. The only question had been, where. Eventually she had wound up at some penitentiary city or another. Somewhere gray with bars, it didn't matter where.  
  
Fantine started at the gates. Big, steel, surgically clean. She was marched in with a line of other people whose faces and sexes were indeterminate. Their clothes were a riot of color but for some reason, for whatever reason their faces didn't matter. After a while she just stared at the ground, since nothing she looked at but their clothes seemed to have any importance. And she'd already memorized the outfits of the ten people before and behind her.  
  
A voice called her name, also faceless and sexless. She stepped through the gates and into a blast of cold air, walking across a courtyard that just seemed to extend further and further the more she walked into it. And then, suddenly, she was in the door and through the other side. It was a white room with gray square pillars, she saw that much. There was a desk at the far end, and two men who shouted at her that her toes belonged on the other side of the white line painted onto the floor. They itemized and took her belongings, including her underpants. They put them in a box and locked them into a bank vault with a door as thick as her waist.  
  
The next room was a bathroom. Gray steel and white tile all over the place. Cold water hit her like a fist to the stomach, fountaining out of a thick fire hose. She screamed a little as it hit her, trying to curl up and protect her chest. It didn't work, and her breath started to come fast and labored as her body tightened from the shock. Her eyes squinted open again as she started to trip, automatically trying to see enough to catch and keep herself from falling. The water was bloody as it ran down the drain. She couldn't figure out where she was cut.  
  
They picked her up next in a giant crane and dropped her into a vat of delousing powder. It got everywhere: her eyes, her mouth, up her nose. Burning her skin, stinging her scalp. It all fell out a hole in the bottom, and she tumbled out shortly after into a pile of powder, blind.  
  
She was lying on a slab. The door, tunnel, whatever she had tumbled out of at the end had put her on a slab, and the delousing powder was gone. She was still blind, though; had she been permanently scarred by it? Fantine realized suddenly that she was about to find out. The familiar hum and whine of the medical scanners was coming closer. Hands that tasted of latex and sterility forced themselves into her mouth, putting a gag down her throat, restraints on her arms and legs. Her eyes were pried open, but she still couldn't see. And yet in her reflection she saw eyes as black as Riddick's, but without the mirror shine.  
  
They passed the scanners over her and then they started in. Every measurement that could possibly be taken was done. Inside and out, they probed and poked her for signs of illness, for reactions, for reasons she didn't know and wasn't willing to guess at. All through it the only thing she could hear was the humming, the whining, the slow and steady beep of machines that recorded all of her vital functions. There was a background surruss of voices, but she had no idea what they were saying. The small part of survival instinct left to her told her in Riddick's voice that she didn't want to know. If she could just close her eyes it would all be over, but the tiny metal clamps still held them open.  
  
The buzzing started. She felt the touch of the tattoo needle just above her knee. It didn't even hurt, although she could feel the blood pooling underneath her. She could feel the numbers they were marking into her skin: 655321. The tattoo needle moved just as it was about to score her most sensitive places. It carved the same number high between her breasts. Marked for everyone to read.  
  
The slab tilted upwards until her face was pressed ever so lightly against a panel of glass. The lights came on, and suddenly she could see again even if she had to squint to do so. Her body was still restrained, the gag was still in place although it couldn't be seen from the outside. Her ears felt plugged with wax.  
  
"Now this..."  
  
Footsteps echoed down the hall and stopped where she was imprisoned. Someone touched a button and the glass panel receded upwards, sending her collapsing to her knees.  
  
"This is unusual. You see here we have a creature out of its element, unwilling to be restrained to its customary place. An anomaly, but not an uncontrollable one. We are currently studying the central nervous system to see if there has been a malfunction..."  
  
Fantine had gotten to her feet and was going to walk away. There weren't any restraints, no holds on her, she could walk away except that when she stood completely the area on which her feet were placed lit up. Glass paneling came down, neatly bisecting her into ten slices, ten slides. She felt them touching her, fingers on the slides of her brain, one hand running over her chest as though to make sure it really was there.  
  
"Fascinating. It doesn't seem to be in any way outwardly different, yet..."  
  
She was in pieces. In slices, like so much sandwich meat. The terror came rushing back in surges, spilling into her. She wanted to open her mouth to scream, but her lips were on one slide, her tongue in two pieces, her vocal cords split between two panes of glass. Her lungs moved frantically from three different places, and she could feel every moment of it. No sound came from the glass, and the dispassionate voices went on and on. 


	9. Fine

As if by instinct when Fantine woke up (finally) she didn't move, barely breathed. She was trapped between the wall and the man next to her, a big man, his arm thrown over her waist and weighing her down. Fear coursed down her body in rivers of sweat. She could smell it all over herself. Panic made her shake, fear kept her still. Self-preservation said that if she didn't move she wasn't going to get hurt. Rodent in the eyes of the raptor. But the stink of fear was all around her and making it so hard to think. Agonizing minutes later she realized that she could also smell something else.  
  
Riddick.  
  
It was Riddick in the bed with her. It was Riddick's arm over her waist, Riddick's hot, soft breath on the side of her face. She blinked a couple times just to make sure she could see, then looked sideways. She could see a couple of spots where he'd missed with the shiv the last time he'd shaved. When he spoke she almost screamed.  
  
"For the last time, I don't want any bananas in the damn sandwich. No bananas. You put bananas in that sandwich and I'll shoot you with this fucking fork."  
  
The words were in English but they didn't make any sense when strung together. And then she realized he was still fast asleep.  
  
She'd never slept with him, ever. They'd always dozed off but then crept out of each other's bunks after sex, leaving the other's pod for their own. They never stayed through true sleep, woke up with someone else in the bunk next to them. She would have had no way of knowing if he talked in his sleep, if he snored or drooled or stole the covers or any of those embarrassing, profoundly intimate details. His voice was completely clear but his eyes were closed, his body relaxed. He talked as though he could have had a perfectly coherent conversation, but he surely didn't know what he was saying.  
  
"What do you mean I can't fire you? You're a fucking fork."  
  
No, he didn't know what he was saying. It was almost enough to make her smile.  
  
She wondered why he was staying now. Her mind could conjure up memories of the last twenty four hours but they were distant, like a tri-d program she might have watched in childhood. She was aware that he had tucked her into bed (Whose bed? His bed? Hers?) but she didn't know why he'd stayed. She resented him a little for that, for being condescending and treating her like a child. He never had before. It was part of what she liked about him.  
  
Fantine St. Germain was not made to be tucked in like a child. Even _as _a child she hadn't needed it. But now she was pathetically grateful for Riddick's presence even as she resented it. The furnace-like heat of his body wrapped around her ice-cold shockiness. The safety of his familiar scent at her back, knowing that he was between her and the door. Knowing that anyone who walked by on the other side couldn't see her, it made her feel safe. She had never had to feel safe before. The intimacy of what they were doing struck her again, somehow so much deeper than all the sex they'd had before. The fact that she welcomed it was terrifying, adding to all the other feelings that were ricocheting around in her body like ball bearings.  
  
The nightmare was still fresh in her thoughts, too; she wasn't going to get back to sleep anytime soon. Rather than stare at the ceiling that was too gray for her tastes she turned towards Riddick, tucking her head under his chin. He woke up, of course, with a jerky movement that knocked his forearm against the side of her head as he reached for a shiv out of instinct.  
  
"Riddick." She didn't know what else to do but lie perfectly still, in case he did grab something sharp.  
  
"Fantine." His voice was still gravelly from sleep. More gravelly than usual. He blinked, sending little lights dancing over his eyes. For a second she was hypnotized by the different ways the shine reflected the light as he moved his head. "Are you..."  
  
She pressed in close, trying to hide between his body and the blankets. "What are you doing here?" It came out muffled.  
  
"Doctor's orders." He slipped his other arm underneath her, wrapping her up tight. It felt good. "He said you shouldn't be left alone."  
  
"Fuck that," she said, but there wasn't any conviction in her tone. Even Riddick's voice hadn't been as rock steady as it usually was. She could feel that something had snapped inside her, although she didn't know what. And she was afraid that it was audible in her voice, especially to Riddick. Richard Riddick, who had picked her out of a crowd full of people and a fight full of bodies for not being what she pretended to be. Who had "Doc's just worrying."  
  
"Fantine..." Riddick said, and then stopped. He was silent for a worryingly long time.  
  
She still had her face snuggled up to his chest, and when the silence became too unbearable she wanted to see his eyes. She wanted to see his silver shining eyes, nothing less would reassure her. Somehow she had gotten it into her mind as he'd kept quiet and she hadn't been able to say anything that he had been replaced. That it was no longer Riddick holding her in the bed but someone else, some other large, terrifying man. She wriggled around, resisting as he tried to pull her closer until he finally let her up, and then she tilted her head back to stare at him. His lower lip was pushed out slightly, an expression that served for concern on the normally un-softened face.  
  
"I'm fine," she told the worried face. It was true, at least for now. Silver eyes, unique at least amongst all the prisoners in the Slam that she knew, meant it was him. Meant that she was safe. She'd never thought of it like that before.  
  
"I don't believe you."  
  
"No, seriously." She tried to wriggle her way out of his arms, felt panic swim over her at the very idea, and stopped. Her voice, when she could speak again, was weak and thready. "I'm fine."  
  
"You're not fine. You're not even in the same system as fine." The lip remained pushed out, the eyes remained narrowed.  
  
With her arms around his waist she could pull back a little and not suffer the paralyzing fear. It was all good as long as she could touch him. And there were still questions she wanted answered. Fantine tried to keep her mind on the questions and not on why she had to touch Riddick to feel safe enough to speak coherently. "Why are you still here, anyway?"  
  
"Doc's orders. Would _you _cross the Doc when he's in a bad mood?" He was trying to make a joke out of it, and his mouth was smiling now, but there was still a tightness to the cadence of his words that wasn't going to go away any time soon. Even in the dark she could read him, especially his voice and the way his arms were still so tense.  
  
"Probably not. I didn't think you'd ... you're not exactly the type to obey orders." She remembered something. "Forks?"  
  
"_What?_"  
  
"You were talking about forks in your sleep. Something about not putting bananas in your sandwich or you were going to fire a fork at someone?" He had to be blushing, even if she couldn't see it between his naturally dark skin and the lack of light in the cell.  
  
"I was going to ..." he turned his head away from her, chuckling. "You must have been asleep."  
  
"You're the one who was asleep, I was awake and listening to you threaten someone over bananas in your sandwich. I didn't even know they put bananas in sandwiches down here." She smirked, knowing he could see it. "What caliber was that fork, anyway?"  
  
"Shaddup." It was relaxing to them both, at least.  
  
She pressed her cheek to his chest again, satisfied that it really was him. "You speak almost like an Aquiline," she murmured, remembering something that had been intriguing her for a long time. "Where did you learn that?"  
  
He was quiet for a little while, and she concentrated on the even puffs of his breath against her skin so she wouldn't have to listen to the sounds of the prison. Sensory input was slowly starting to return for more than just the immediate vicinity. She could see a little further again, hear a little further. The only problem was there wasn't anything nearby she wanted to see or hear. Nothing further than the cell doors. Outside of her and Riddick she just didn't want the world to exist.  
  
When he spoke again she'd almost forgotten the question. "I learned it in school," he said, although she had the feeling that wasn't the whole story. "Believe it or not. I _did _go to school, for a little while."  
  
She actually chuckled a little bit at that. "Until you got bored and ran off to make your own fun, I'd bet."  
  
"Something like that."  
  
More silence again. She blurted it out finally, curiosity pouring out overtop of all the other emotions, pushed to the surface from what was suddenly an overflowing well. "What did you do? To get tossed in here, I mean." It sounded so schoolgirl. Now she wished she hadn't said anything.  
  
But he only laughed. "Killed a bunch of people. They don't throw us in for parking violations."  
  
"I figured that much out for myself, thank you," she thumped him ever so lightly in the ribs, bringing back vivid memories of happier times and mock- fights in the pod, before bed. "Ka-pow."  
  
He seemed to know what she was thinking, and hugged her tighter for a second. "Let's just say I killed a bunch of people," was all he said, and that after several minutes of thinking, "And leave it at that."  
  
Fantine's thoughts raced. Something Riddick didn't want to talk about. Something bad, from the sound of his voice. Couldn't have been that bad, though, or maybe it was just far enough away in memory that he could talk around it but not of it, not directly. But what had it been? Personal? Or so horrible that he didn't think she could hear it? She was dying of curiosity. "Okay." She knew better than to push.  
  
"I killed a bunch of mercenaries..." he said then, turning and resting his cheek on the top of her head. "That got me on their shit list. The rest was simple."  
  
"Simple." Nothing was simple anymore. She felt as though she'd been split in two, Fury and Fantine, one before that horrible day and one after. She felt as though she was staring at herself from across the Antares Canyons and unable to look away. "I guess."  
  
"What about you? What are you in for?"  
  
She'd expected the question, but she still wasn't prepared for it. "Arson. Armed robbery. Murder. Lots of it. Like you said, they don't dump us in here for parking violations." It was the same flippant answer she'd given Nicole centuries ago.  
  
"And the rest was simple?"  
  
She felt cut open, and everything was bleeding out. "No."  
  
He waited.  
  
"My Mom died shortly after I came to my majority. Drug overdose. We all figured it was coming sooner or later, she had more crap in her wing of the house than a pharmacy. Between that and the twenty different types of alcohol it was even odds which would kill her first. The hospitals wouldn't give her another liver. Said they didn't have the right type, but I knew better. She didn't need a second chance anyway."  
  
Riddick didn't say a word. It made it harder for her to continue.  
  
"I got stupid, then, I guess. All the money in the world and no Mom, no Dad to tell me what to do..."  
  
"Your Dad died, too?"  
  
"Nah, but he was never around anyway, so it didn't make much difference." A beat. She was realizing something. "I never really missed my parents much. They weren't the best parents in the world, although they did keep a roof over my head and food on my plate, but they weren't the worst either. They just... weren't there. I think I missed the idea of having parents more than anything else. Anyway." Riddick surely couldn't have wanted to know that much about her home life. She felt her face burn.  
  
"Anyway...?"  
  
"So after... well, I went a little nuts. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We had the fast vehicles and the massive amounts of expensive technology and too much time on our hands. Spoiled rich kids, all of us. Only I had the bright idea, why squander the family fortune? Why not just creatively add to it? All the thrill, all the money."  
  
He waited. "That's it?" he asked finally.  
  
"That's it. Stupid, but not really all that interesting. And probably anti- climactic."  
  
"You killed people for thrills." His voice had gone flat, distant. She would have thought, disapproving, if Riddick had been the sort inclined towards stern disapproval like someone's school headmaster. Damn.  
  
"Well, no. Yes. Sort-of." She sighed. "No. And... let's just leave it at that, okay?"  
  
"Okay."  
  
No teasing, no jokes. It felt strange to miss the jokes. They were usually folded seamlessly into the conversation, light-hearted teasing and quips so obscure that it took some people days to figure out what had just gone on. Then again, the topic of conversation had been pretty hefty. Her fault, she supposed, for giving in to curiosity.  
  
"Doesn't really matter now, I suppose," she murmured. Thinking out loud again, and it was probably a bad habit to get into in the Slam and especially around Riddick but she couldn't help herself right now. She was feeling too much, thinking too much, and it had to come out or she'd explode. "I mean, we're all in here. We're the worst of the worst, or at least that's what they tell us. That's what we tell ourselves."  
  
"Most of us are right about that." He sounded as though he was walking on eggshells. She hated that he had to think that way about her. "We're bad men, Fantine. We're..."  
  
"Stop that. I know what you are. I know what we are, down here. What I mean is, I guess it doesn't matter what we did on the outside. No one's ever going to really know for sure. What matters is what we do here, now. What we're willing to do."  
  
He shifted a little in the bed but didn't say anything. She wondered what he was thinking. Hell, she was wondering what she was thinking, especially now. She half-hoped he didn't ask her what she meant by those words, because she couldn't have come up with an answer for him if she'd tried. And she didn't want to try. She'd rather just babble it all out and get it over with, if this was one of the phases she was supposed to go through after... but she didn't want to think about that, either.  
  
"What are you going to do?" It was a complex question, she could tell that much. He was trying to ask something without asking it. She hated it when he did that.  
  
"I don't know."  
  
They'd exhausted all potential topics of conversation, and neither of them knew what to say. It felt odd, being so vulnerable, so confused afraid. Especially in the presence of the one person who she would never have wanted to show fear to. There was something deeply shameful about being afraid in front of Riddick. In front of anyone, but especially in front of Riddick. She didn't want him to see her like this, and she couldn't pull away. He made it safe. He was part of her, part of her world that could still hold her up. He was safe to trust and to hide behind. But the fact that she was hiding behind him must have said to him that she wasn't what he thought she was. She wasn't what he thought she was, what she had been convincing him she was. The thought latched into her brain like a lamprey and wouldn't let go.  
  
He was falling asleep again. Dozing, she recognized the rhythm and the slight twitch of uncoiling muscles from all their previous nights together. But still falling asleep. Eventually she was able to sleep as well. At least until the nightmares came back.

* * *

Day was indistinguishable from night in the Slam, a factor which Fantine was sure contributed to the psychosis of the inmates. The only signs that marked the passing of the evening to the morning hours were the guards changing on those areas which had them and the faint brightening of the lights from yellow to white. Not that it made one whit of difference in how much light there was in the prison overall. She figured it was just some long-forgotten designer's nod to the Circadian rhythms by which humans lived their lives.  
  
She hadn't been able to sleep. Eventually she'd just lay there under Riddick's arm and listened to his sleep-talk until the lights changed. There had been more, although nothing quite so humorous as the bananas and the fork. Once or twice she thought she caught something she shouldn't have. By the time he started to stir awake she'd resolved to put it out of her mind, and not to sleep with Riddick again if she could possibly help it. It was too personal, she was hearing too much for her own comfort. Or his, if she heard something and then let it slip out again later in public. Which was all too likely in her current babbling state.  
  
She turned her head again and found herself staring almost directly into open, silvered eyes. Her vision swam as she stopped breathing for a second out of pure shock. "Jesus..."  
  
"Riddick." He smiled.  
  
"Goofball." She punched him lightly in the side again. "Ka-pow," she murmured around a yawn. "Anyone get the tag of that raptor that crapped in my mouth?"  
  
He grinned. And then he rolled off the bed, and suddenly she felt as though she'd been dumped on an ice planet. "Funny..." he yawned, stretched. It was good to watch him stretch, but not as warm. He headed towards the door.  
  
"Hey..." she jumped out of bed, nearly fell as her feet tangled in the blankets, and somehow managed to struggle over to where her shoes were. "Where are you going?"  
  
"Bathroom?" he arched eyebrows at her as though it was perfectly obvious. It probably was. She had something of an aching need to pee, herself. "Where'd you think I was going?"  
  
"I don't know..." She did know; she'd been certain, for one split second, that he was just going to walk right out of the door, the Slam, and her life. Never mind that while the first was probable the second didn't even bear thinking about, she would have laid money on it if someone had asked her. It was embarrassing. "Never mind. I'll come with you." That was even more embarrassing. Men and women shared all facilities almost equally in the Slam. She wasn't going to raise any eyebrows going into a men's bathroom on a men's cellblock, or at least not for those reasons.  
  
"Okay..." he blinked a couple times, shrugged, and started down the hall.  
  
She followed him, trying not to hunch over like someone who expected to be beaten. Going to the bathroom together in the morning and performing wake- up ablutions was something that couples did. Like spending a night in the same bed, asleep. She hated the fact that she was so dependant on Riddick, that she was performing all the actions of a girlfriend out of necessity. But staying in bed would have meant staying in bed alone, and going to the bathroom alone would have meant being alone in a white tile room where anyone could have walked in and...  
  
Fantine hurried to catch up with him. He gave her a quizzical, slightly worried glance, but didn't say anything. A couple other inmates who she vaguely recognized as being on Riddick's block gave her strange glances as she scurried into a cubicle, but they didn't say anything either. It was all very awkward, and she hated it.  
  
It was bad enough that she couldn't squeeze a drop at first. She sat there, cold metal and cold tile underneath her, shivering. The world had narrowed to that little tunnel again, not so far that she couldn't see her way out of it, but close. The sounds echoed in her ears and were distant at the same time, underwater noises. Someone banged on the door, and she screamed something profane and profound at the same time involving horses. She didn't know what she said.  
  
When she was finally able to finish and pull her clothes back on her hands were shaking. Humiliation stained her face red, made her clumsy and oafish. It was almost as overwhelming as when she'd finally come back to self awareness in the quarantine shower, with Riddick sponge-bathing her like a child.  
  
"You okay?" Riddick's voice sounded in her ear as she scurried out. Another jump, another suppressed scream. It was starting to hurt her throat.  
  
"Fine." She swallowed, knowing how blatant the lie was. "I'm fine."  
  
"Okay..." His voice was calm, even, as though they did this all the time. She wished she could be half so calm. "Come on. Let's go get breakfast." 


	10. Hope

She'd given Joey the list of names in a moment of undeniable cowardice. Fantine simply didn't want to know who it had been; she'd blocked all faces out of her memory, leaving only nightmarish sensations of being passed around like a piece of meat. Which, really, was nightmare enough. They were walking through the halls from the infirmary and Joey was reading as he walked, a skill she envied him. Then again, most of the time he seemed to be hyper-aware of his surroundings anyway, at least in places where there were a lot of people around. It was a sort of awareness she was starting to realize she shared. She was starting to realize a lot of things about Joey.  
  
Most of which, she was sure, he wouldn't want known, so she kept her silence. Kept quiet, as he must have kept quiet for all those days or weeks or months or however long it had been. She wanted desperately to ask him how he managed it. How he managed to keep up some semblance of normality, but at the same time she was sure he didn't want to talk about it. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. It was too intense, too overwhelming. Just thinking about it obliquely, with as little as she knew, made her shiver.  
  
He made a strangled noise, and she glanced sideways at him. Her hands, she realized then, were clenched into shaking fists. She'd noticed a habit of doing that when she wasn't concentrating, or surrounded by friends at which point she could relax. It was probably going to get someone into trouble some day.  
  
"How bad is it?" she asked after the third person had walked around them, cursing.  
  
"Bad." He glanced at her. He was barely taller than she was. "You should really read this for yourself."  
  
Fantine nodded. But she was staring at the list as though it was something large and poisonous that was going to bite her in half and dissolve what remained with acid from its fangs, only that was the nightmare she'd had last night. Reality and fantasy warped in on each other for a second, came back to reality as someone stumbled into her. She would have punched him if Joey hadn't put a hand on her arm, looking as though he expected to be punched, himself.  
  
"I'm okay..." she muttered. It was a blatant lie.  
  
"Of course you are." He kept his tone mild, looking around. "Here... come on, let's get out of the hallway, at least."  
  
"Where are..."  
  
It wasn't far, whatever it was. There was the lingering smell of laundry- room chemicals, old containers and piles of rat-chewed clothing. "I don't think anyone remembers this place exists," he told her as he turned over a couple barrels, apparently to make sure there wasn't anything nesting underneath them. "I'm surprised they haven't walled over it yet, but I guess they're not too concerned about the architecture of the place as long as they have enough room for everyone."  
  
"I guess..." her voice came out faint. Architecture and forgotten rooms were definitely some of the last things on her mind, although she was grateful for the privacy. "Thanks."  
  
"Anytime..." he touched her arm, gentle but insistent. "You really should read this. I don't think you'd want me to read it to you..."  
  
She took the list, muttering, "Don't be too sure about that." But he knelt beside her at least, hovering close enough that it would have been stifling, before. Now it was just comforting, a relief. She swung from such extremes of fear and unthinking comfort, and she hated it. But she had the list in front of her, and if Joey could stand it, so could she. "All right. Here goes."  
  
The words didn't make sense at first. The letters were right, she recognized the alphabet she had learned before she could remember her childhood, but the order in which they went didn't seem to make sense at first. She was reduced to sounding out the names like a baby again, and felt hot and humiliated because of it. Joey didn't say anything. She was able to shut him out, almost to forget he was there. After she'd sounded out the last name she sat, frozen, for one long minute. The tears were rolling down her face again.  
  
"Fantine..." Joey whispered, not touching her, not yet. "Are you there?"  
  
A detached part of her mind that could still think noticed that he hadn't asked if she was okay, but if she was there. Probably a more reasonable question. Reason born out of experience, he had experience in such matters. God. What had they done to him? To both of them? She could match faces with the names, now, horrible faces that leered at her from somewhere above her chin as the hands pressed down low where hands shouldn't go, bruising her, clutching and grabbing and squeezing till she popped.  
  
"Fantine..."  
  
She was crying still. Actually by now she was gasping and sobbing, completely unaware that she had an audience. She wouldn't let herself cry around Riddick if she could possibly help it, and she'd managed to keep that small bit of self control for a long time. Bad enough that she could barely leave his side without becoming panicked, she wouldn't let him see how weak she'd gotten. But this was different. This was a trigger and a pounding flood of memories and this was little Joey Keyes, who knew. He knew.  
  
That made it all right, somehow. She could cry in front of him, and all the aching grief and terror and loss of the woman she had been came out in a flood of wet. And Joey took her into his arms and pulled her gently down to where he knelt on the cold ferrocrete floor, awkward and stuttery and a wealth of comfort.  
  
He didn't say anything. She was afraid of how grateful she was to him for that.  
  
"Oh god..." It was all she could say for a little while, and at that it was an improvement over not being able to say anything at all. "Oh god. Richard can't know about this. He just can't know."  
  
"He's going to find out sooner or later," Joey pointed out. "And more likely sooner if he talks to Doc Weller. I don't think the Doc's going to keep this from him, not with... well, you know what he's like."  
  
"Yeah." It didn't matter which 'he' Joey was referring to, really. "But... God. If Riddick finds out... he's going to do something stupid, I know it. And he can't do anything, not with this..."  
  
Joey nodded, slowly but emphatically. He hadn't moved, either, and she was startled to realize that she didn't want him to. Joey was safe to be with in a way that Riddick never could have been, safe to be weak in front of, safe because he knew what it was like. Every movement he made was welcome, every word he said had been right so far, and even Riddick had had awkward moments where he said something to provoke her into blind rage or helpless panic. It was different, now, and Riddick and Lawson and even Doc hadn't realized it. But Joey had.  
  
"This isn't the kind of thing you can just leave alone, though," Joey pointed out after a little while, although his arms tightened around her while he spoke. It made her want to giggle, the thought of little Joey Keyes being protective of the Fury. "These people aren't going to stop. And like you said, Riddick is going to want to do something, and Lawson is, too..."  
  
"Lawson...?" she blinked. For some reason that hadn't occurred to her.  
  
"Yes..." Joey smirked, but didn't explain why. "And it's just going to piss them off even more. We might be able to get around Big Rob, deal with him somehow, but Petrovsky..."  
  
Fantine turned and vomited what little lunch she'd been able to force down onto the floor. _Cold, papery skin, fingers ending in pointed nails slipping tenderly into her, a grotesque parody of a lover's touch while his gray voice slid into her ears._ She finally registered that Joey was speaking.  
  
But he wasn't speaking anything more than drivel, over and over again. "Fantine... Fantine, come on back. Come on back. They're not here, it's just you and me. It's just you and me, Fantine..."  
  
"I'm okay..." she muttered. There was a coppery taste in her mouth that did not bode well. She scrubbed at her mouth with a sleeve drawn over one hand; Joey found a piece of clean cloth from somewhere and helped a little. "I'm okay."  
  
He didn't even call her on the lie. "You're doing damn well, you know," he told her instead. "Most people would have hidden in their pods and not come out for months. If at all."  
  
She smiled without humor or cheer. "I might as well stay in my pod. It's not like I can go anywhere without one of you guys..." He was shaking his head. "What?"  
  
"Fantine, nine... no, eleven out of twelve people who have been through what you went through would be shivering in their beds and probably dying of starvation by now. You were out and talking and going to breakfast the next day. And if you think you're weak just because you have to depend upon the presence of a friend... you're not. Trust me."  
  
She stared at him, eyes wide, mouth trembling a little. The thought that it could be worse than it had already been hadn't occurred to her, nor the thought that she might be doing well. She wasn't sure he wasn't just saying it to make her feel better, although she would have suspected that more from Riddick or Lawson.  
  
"What are you saying..."  
  
"I'm..." he shook his head. "Hell. I don't know what I'm saying, except ... you're strong, Fantine. You're stronger than either Riddick or Lawson. At least from what I've seen, you've come through hell and out the other side and you're barely shaking. At least that's what it looks like from out here. Most people in your situation, nearly all people, wouldn't leave their pods if they knew for certain that more, and possibly worse, was on the way. They certainly wouldn't be walking along as calmly as you've been, like nothing happened. You look fine, you look strong. You definitely don't look as weak or cowardly as I bet you think you are." He put a teasing tone to his voice, teasing and serious at the same time.  
  
"Really?"  
  
"It's only been... less than eight weeks, definitely. And you're acting as though nothing's wrong, nothing's happened, at least in public. It's not as though you went very many places without us anyway, not openly. And no one really expects the Fury to come back, I think. So, yes, really. In fact that's probably why ..." he stopped.  
  
"Why no one's made a move to finish the job, or at least start the sequel." She knew he'd been thinking it. She'd been wondering something similar, or at least waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was almost like the few days after she'd been unmasked, only worse. Infinitely worse. "Especially given..."  
  
"Given who was in on it." Now that she'd broached the subject for herself Joey was willing to talk about it, at least tentatively. "And that probably explains why they were able to get away with it, and bribe guards to stand watch. They were probably under orders to shout a heads up if Riddick or Lawson came their way."  
  
"Or you..." she smiled, letting her head drop to his shoulder without thinking. She was so tired all of a sudden.  
  
"Not me." He sat her up, gently. "Not me. I'm not strong. Not like you three." There was more, but he wasn't saying it.  
  
"You've survived more than they have." It seemed self-evident, she didn't know why he was denying it. Especially not after what he'd told her. His arm tightened around her again in a half-hug.  
  
"Fantine, it's not that simple. You're fighters, you're survivors, and I'm not. You're not a victim, you're a survivor..." It came out more choked than she'd expected, and she pulled her head back to stare up at him with widened eyes. His face had gone still and trembly at the same time. "And I'm not. I'm just not. It's... I can't explain it. Don't ask me to explain it." The last six words rasped out of his throat.  
  
"Joey..." She didn't know what to say. "Still?"  
  
He wouldn't look at her, which was really answer enough. Thoughts whirled around in her head, and for once the memory of being passed around like a breakfast plate didn't wrack her body as it usually did. There weren't any faces or sensations connected with it this time, though, which probably did it. It was just a phrase associated with thoughts of Joey, the thought that he must have meant something like that, and just couldn't say it even to her. Being a woman in the boys' club counted for some good things as well as a whole lot of bad, but evidently she wasn't woman enough to know what happened to him, still. Or maybe she was too much woman, and he wanted to keep some semblance of manliness even when held up next to archetypes of masculinity like Riddick and Lawson and even the fatherly Doc.  
  
"It gets better..." he said finally. "Living with it, I mean. It gets easier. You get used to it."  
  
She wasn't sure which he was talking about, and she hoped he wasn't talking about future events. Now Fantine realized she was in the unlikely position of needing to offer comfort; it was easier, somehow, because she couldn't stand to see Joey so broken. Or maybe she always had been seeing it and hadn't known what she was looking at. That thought was so much worse, though. She held him as he had done for her only moments before, trying to think of the right words.  
  
"Richard wouldn't have thought of this, you know..." she said suddenly, remembering something. "He doesn't... I don't know. I thought it would be okay, even once I realized that I was scared to... that I was scared. But he still doesn't understand some things. He just..."  
  
"He won't," Joey smiled a little. "He's smart, but he's not a victim. He never has been, not like that. I can't imagine that he ever will be, although you never really know. That's part of the harshness of it, you don't know. But... no, Riddick isn't a victim. Hasn't been a victim. Neither has Lawson. Neither has Doc, although he's seen more of it than either of the others put together."  
  
She nodded. "Richard said something like that. Said that the Doc was ... was surprised Richard hadn't know what was going on in the infirmary."  
  
"Most of the people who go down there who haven't been shivved, half the people who go down there for getting the shit kicked out of them..."  
  
"Also go down there for other things."  
  
He nodded. "It's one of the staples of prison life," he said, with only a little bitterness. "Part of the package. You get your bad food, your sticky mattresses, your malfunctioning electrics, your tough guys, prison bosses, indifferent guards, and your victims."  
  
Eight weeks ago she would have made a flippant comment about prison bitches. Not anymore. "I don't suppose," she said almost wistfully, "That it would help to offer to do anything about it."  
  
"There's nothing you can do." Simple, matter-of-fact, and utterly devoid of hope. "It's..."  
  
"A fact of life, I know." She remembered something Riddick had done, and brushed her fingers over the top of his head, through his hair, stroking lightly. It had seemed to help at the time. She made it clumsy and awkward, though. "I still wish..."  
  
He caught her hand in his after a minute and watched her startled reaction. "Yeah..." His eyes were searching her face for something, and she didn't know what it was or how to give it to him. "I wish, too."  
  
He was holding her hand very lightly, as though expecting her to pull away at any moment. So it wasn't as though it was entirely unexpected when he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips. It wasn't even unpleasant; he wasn't a very good kisser, but somehow that made it better. More real. There was the requisite bumping of noses, fumbling gestures that reminded her of the kisses she'd given and received when she'd barely begun her teenage years. And the whole affair was done with exquisite care and tenderness.  
  
But he did pull back, after a few moments, when she didn't respond perhaps as much as he'd hoped. And he knew it, too, when she smiled ruefully.  
  
"I had to try..." he smiled back a little, clearly hoping she hadn't taken offense or (perhaps worse) been triggered into a flashback. Not that she would have, not from that clumsy and heartfelt kind of kiss.  
  
"I know. I ..." Understand, but the moment had just turned plain awkward now. He blushed, and she blushed too and shook her head, chuckling. "I'm flattered."  
  
"But there's Riddick, huh." It wasn't a question, but he didn't seem to be upset, either. She thought about it a bit before she spoke up.  
  
"No..." Fantine shook her head, wondering if she'd have to tell Riddick what she was starting to realize. "Not really."  
  
Joey blinked. "Not really?"  
  
"Not in that sense, anyway. Not really. It..." She was poking amongst feelings that she'd never explored before, and she was a little startled to find out what they were. "We're friends. But that's obvious, and everything else. But it's not anything more than that. Not anything... romantic."  
  
"This isn't exactly a romantic sort of place," he pointed out.  
  
"Yeah, but it's more than that." She stood up a little, feeling the need to pace, to rub her arms although she wasn't exactly cold. "We're friends. We're good friends, I know he's got my back, I'm pretty sure he knows I've got his if it ever came down to it. We can talk pretty easily, we share some common areas of interest, some common ideas. We get along all right, and there's that other aspect of it that's ... well. But it ... I don't have feelings for him. Not those feelings, anyway."  
  
He smiled a little. "But not for me, either."  
  
"And why do I feel like I should be apologizing for that?" she made it teasing, disarming, hoping to lighten the mood a little. And he did laugh, gently.  
  
"It's all right. I didn't really think you had, anyway. But..." he shrugged.  
  
"Nothing wrong with hope."  
  
"Mmm." He looked around. "I guess not. It's a rare enough commodity here as it is." 


	11. Normal

A/N: ... all right, Chronicles of Riddick totally blasted my plans for the sequel all to hell. Am reconfiguring. Still planning on a sequel to be set post CoR, just... need to work on it a little more. Anyway, I give you more Jezebel.

* * *

She told Riddick before Doc could, with Joey and Lawson standing guard in the background, closest to the door. Fantine had followed him into his pod and then stood there with the other two in front of the door. When she'd started to describe what had happened she had watched his face. A number of expressions flickered through before he finally settled on impassive blankness. If it was uncomfortable and painful for her to tell it, it was at least bothering him to listen. She wasn't sure why, possibly something to do with coming at it from the point of view of someone who, as Joey said, had never been a victim. Not here, at least.  
  
His fists clenched throughout the story. If she thought of it as a story, a piece of fiction that wasn't really happening, it was easier to tell it. These horrible things hadn't happened to her, they had happened to a character in a story. It made it a little more bearable. When she started putting names into the story, though, it took her two or three times to say it. Riddick knew who they were, at least; she didn't have to tell him.  
  
"Yuri." It grated out in a voice so deep it could have swum through the core. "All right. What now?"  
  
"I don't know." Fantine shook her head; behind her, the other two men relaxed. "I just don't know. Rumor has it that they both lost a lot of money in the first few fights, when no one knew the odds against me. And they're definitely pissed that ..." She didn't say it, but everyone knew what she was talking about.  
  
"Big Rob..." Lawson spoke up, and jumped a little as everyone turned sharply to look at him. "He probably doesn't want to kill you, just collect you. He likes exotic things, and ... well, you're about as exotic as he's going to get down here. Just..." Riddick was staring at him as though he wanted to snap his neck. "Just saying. Makes it a little less ... a little easier than if they just wanted to kill you. Doesn't it?"  
  
"Not for her," Joey muttered.  
  
That silenced both the other men for a short while. Finally Lawson sighed. "So what do we do now?"  
  
"Stay low." Riddick was the first one to answer. "Keep a low profile, stay where we are till we can figure out how to send our own message. I'm not going to let this go unanswered."  
  
Fantine glanced over at him, sharp and afraid. She didn't like the sound of those words, and she liked the thought of sending her own message back to the prison warlords even less. "Riddick..." The one word was a warning.  
  
"Wait, what message?" Lawson frowned. "Riddick, no offense, but where do you figure into all this? This was her lesson..." He winced the second the words were out of his mouth. It didn't even need the other three glaring at him. "This was aimed at her, not you."  
  
"It was a message to me, too, Lawson," Riddick told him. "'Control your woman, or we'll control her for you.' "  
  
"_What?_"  
  
"My first day here..." she muttered, and raised her voice as everyone turned their heads in her direction. "Second day, actually. The day after that fight. Nicole came onto me in the women's block, the free woman's block. Took me to the women's canteen, sat me down, gave me a little bit of the rundown on how this place works. Not too much that I didn't already know, but it was still pretty interesting. Then she offered to be my protector, by which she meant of course my sugar momma, and started to get ugly. Riddick came up and said something nasty, and she left. Since then I've pretty much been Riddick's girl."  
  
The two men looked from her to Riddick and back, eyebrows up. Neither of them evidently thought of Fantine as anyone's girl, and she couldn't really blame them. She was always, or at least until the attack, one of the guys. Just another convict in the Slam, no one's meat and not a rat-shit inmate, the kind who was really just a pet to serve the guards. She was just another convict, and their friend. Or as close to friendship as anyone like them got, since no one really was comfortable with such messy things as emotions. They didn't go around hugging or talking about their feelings. There was as much bravado between them as everyone else, the only difference was that they trusted each other.  
  
But that didn't mean they had positions in the ranks. Keyes was the weakest among them, that didn't mean they owned him. Fantine was a woman, and women were usually whores or pets in the prison, but not with them she wasn't. They'd been so locked into their own insular pattern of thinking that on the surface they'd mostly forgotten how the rest of the prison saw them. At least until the incident, and then she and Riddick had been forced to think about it. Now Lawson was finally seeing how it looked from an outsider's point of view. Joey, although none of them had thought about it, already knew.  
  
"What are they going to do?" It came out hushed and more respectful than Lawson had been of anyone else in a long time.  
  
"I don't know." Fantine sighed. "I don't know how ..."  
  
"We don't know how they operate," Riddick took over, watching her struggle with the names of the leaders, the alpha wolves in the packs that had attacked her. "Some things we can take as given, but the specifics... we'll have to find those out."  
  
"Big Rob's a lush," Joey spoke up, but he looked as though he was fighting not to wrap his arms around himself. Fantine moved forward and was halted in mid-stride by his glare. "He likes his girls, his food... he likes anything that makes his life easier. He doesn't think he's meant to be in a Slam, not in a Triple-Max facility. In his mind, he should be in some resort prison, not rotting down here under the ground."  
  
"He might get his chance," Lawson commented, "I hear they're converting more and more prisons to daylight facilities these days."  
  
Fantine laughed, a hollow sound. "You're going to be a dying breed, Riddick, if that happens."  
  
"What do you mean, breed?"  
  
Joey rolled his eyes. "Anyway. Big Rob won't do anything until she starts messing with his business again. Unless it looks like he can get you, too, Riddick. Word is he thinks you two make a cute couple."  
  
"A _what?_" Riddick stared.  
  
"Cute couple. Although in his mind that means a nice set of bookends for his cellblock doors. If he can get you two into his organization to stand around and look nice, it'll be a good chunk of change in his pocket..."  
  
"And a nice jump up the pecking order..." Fantine muttered, watching Riddick nod. "The Fury and the Silver-Eyed... whatever they call him."  
  
"The Riddick," he said, low-voiced and grinning.  
  
"Whatever. So what does that mean?"  
  
"It means..." Joey thought for a second. "It means don't make a deal with him, ever. Not for anything less than material commodities, anyway. You don't want to be owing him favors. On the other hand, it means he's probably less pissed at you and less likely to put a hit out on you, as long as you stay out of the fighting rings. Even if you go back into the rings, he might have a better idea, now, of what you can do. He'll make his bets accordingly."  
  
"What about Yuri?"  
  
Fantine closed her eyes as Riddick said his name. "Yeah. What about him?"  
  
"He's... probably more dangerous."  
  
Silence. They all looked at each other except for Fantine, who looked at the floor. _Paper-thin, wrinkled skin. Jagged fingernails. Whispering. _Voices came and went around her, the conversation went on and left her behind. Joey touched her arm, and she jumped a little.  
  
"Hey..." Above them, Lawson and Riddick were still discussing tactics, the Russian Mafioso who supposedly still ran his operation from prison. "You're okay. You're safe here, you're with friends."  
  
"I know..." But she hadn't; for a second she'd thought she was back under Yuri's hands and she'd frozen up stiff. "I know. Thanks."  
  
Riddick and Lawson had stopped speaking and were looking at her; Riddick's expression was unreadable behind the shine. She moved uncomfortably from foot to foot, feeling the scrutiny like a weight on her shoulders. She didn't want to make any of the decisions. She didn't want to think about what Yuri's organization would do to her, what they should have already done to her. She didn't want to wonder what they were waiting for. She just wanted it all to go away.  
  
"Fantine..." She closed her eyes against Lawson's voice, Riddick's shine.  
  
"What?"  
  
"What do you want to do?"  
  
"I don't know." She was furious with them for even asking, and guilty because she was so angry. Joey had said that the conflicted feelings went away with time, but when? Was she ever going to get used to being fragmented, out of control one minute and fine the next? She forced her hands to unclench and took several deep breaths. "I want..." Swallowing, she started to think about what she wanted. "I want to start fighting again. I need to get back into the ring."  
  
Now all three of them were staring at her; Joey had a look of horror and dismay. "That's not a good idea..." he started to say, but she shook her head.  
  
"It's a better idea... no, just listen. It's a better idea than going insane and shivving someone in the hall because I can't get myself under control. I need something, I need to hit something. And ... all the friends in the world aren't going to help that, and I'm sorry, you guys, but it's true."  
  
"You know that won't make it better with Rob and Yuri," Riddick said in a quiet rumble. She didn't look at him, only nodded. "It'll just make things worse for you."  
  
"I know." She took a deep breath. "Frankly, if I manage it, I don't expect to be alive this time next year. Assuming anyone knows when that will be. But I don't want to keep living like this. I feel weak, I feel like a fucking coward... Joey, I know what you're going to say, and it helps but it doesn't change anything. I need to get back to the rest of my life. My normal life. Or what was normal, before..."  
  
None of them liked it. Lawson and Joey immediately tried to talk her out of it, their voices rising above each other in competition until Riddick finally shouted at them both to shut up. Fantine remained stock still.  
  
"This isn't a good idea," he told her. The expression of gratitude died before it was uttered.  
  
"Oh, Riddick..." she sighed. "Not you too."  
  
"What?"  
  
"_Nothing_ is going to make this better, all right? Nothing. There is nothing I can do or say that will assuage the blow to their fucking egos that I dealt, by getting involved in the fights and doing it on my own terms, even if they didn't know it at the time. The best thing I can do right now is to help _myself_, to get my ass back in that ring and put myself back in the place I was before, on _top_." She didn't realize she was shouting until she'd stopped and the room seemed very quiet.  
  
"And how are you going to do that?"  
  
Did_ nothing_ faze this man? Lawson and Joey were staring at her like they didn't even know her. Fantine felt a smile that was unpleasant and stiff push at the corners of her mouth. "How do you think, Richard?"  
  
More stares, more glances from side to side. It had been a slip but not a fatal one, not here. Riddick, as he always did, twitched slightly when she used his first name. "Are you sure?" For the first time since the argument had started she heard the tension in his voice. "Think about what you're..."  
  
"I've thought about it long enough," she snapped back, and felt everything start to unravel inside her. "God... Goddammit, you guys, can't you just back me just this once?"  
  
Strangled noises, hurt looks. She sat down on the bunk and dropped her head into her hands, wanting to cry but for the love of all that was still holy, not in front of them. It felt as though it was all as bad as it was the first day, as though she was falling apart with no hope of recovery. And she'd just said something unforgivable to her friends, and she wanted to ... to do something. Some sort of penance was required, but just what kind, that she was unsure on. She was beginning to shake, her mouth went slack, her eyes burned. She gulped down air and tried to force back the tears.  
  
"Sorry..." she gasped, swallowed. Calm, she had to be calm. Pull it together. "Sorry. I just..." Just what? Just was going crazy? It was the truth at least. "I don't know." That, too, was true.  
  
"Feels like everything's going nuts, doesn't it?" Joey asked, not without considerable sympathy. She'd forgotten that he knew what it was like, too. "Like everything's going to pieces?"  
  
"Yeah." She bobbed her head in a grotesque parody of the affirmative. "Yeah. Exactly."  
  
"Still?" Riddick asked, and Joey must have glared at him because he didn't say anything more and closed his eyes, the silver shine disappearing into the darkness. She could see it even looking through her fingers.  
  
"You guys didn't deserve that," she said, and looked up. Whether or not she could keep from crying she could at least keep all but the smallest of tears from falling, and Riddick was the only one who could have seen. But not with his eyes closed. "I'm just ... really twitchy these days. Like I said, feels like I want to ..."  
  
"Hit something." Lawson sighed. "I know. But why there? And you're going to go for the big venues, I know you are." She didn't bother to deny it. "And that's just going to piss them off even more. If it pissed them off before, and then... what are they going to do to you now?"  
  
"I don't know. But it doesn't matter anymore, not really." They all looked at her at that. "Stop it, okay? It doesn't. I've been brought to their attention and whether or not I fight they're going to make me a target whatever I do. I might as well try and get my life back to some kind of normal while I can. And who knows? Maybe they won't mind so much if I'm not hiding behind hoods and things."  
  
"Big Rob certainly won't," Joey said, but it didn't sound as though he thought that was a good thing. "But he'll try and get you for other things."  
  
"Yeah, showpieces. I remember."  
  
"Be a big feather in his cap if he can 'tame' you..."  
  
"We remember," Riddick snapped, finally starting to audibly fray at the edges. Joey muttered something before lapsing into silence. "You sure you want to do this, Fantine?"  
  
"Ask me that one more time," she muttered, but it was more tired than anything. "Go on. I dare you."  
  
No one did. No one, it seemed, had any more objections. She'd won that argument, but she didn't want to think about what she'd done to their friendship in order to do so. Just the thought of what she'd snapped out in anger made her sick to her stomach. It also made her want to do incredibly girly things such as hug or weep, and that just made her angrier at herself. She didn't want to talk to Joey about it anymore. She didn't want to hear him say that it was 'okay', as though she needed permission to hug, or to weep. She wanted to be what she had been before, and hated the fact that it was impossible.  
  
Thankfully, no one moved towards or away from her. Lawson shrugged a little but that was it. "I guess... I don't know. Do you really think they'll let you back in? Now that they know who you are..."  
  
"No more disguises," Riddick broke in, firm, as though he expected her to obey what he said. "It wouldn't work anyway."  
  
"Probably not, but I wasn't intending to disguise myself. I just figured I'd go up and say hi and ask when the next fight I could be scheduled in for would be. And no, I don't know if they'll let me back in, but..." she shrugged. "I'll think about that when I get there."  
  
Joey shuddered. She could hear it in every shaky breath, but he didn't say anything to stop her or even to encourage her. Lawson and Riddick glanced at him, Riddick for slightly longer and she wondered what he saw, but didn't ask.  
  
"They might let you in just for the fun of it," Riddick said, and she thought he was actually chuckling now. "I'm sure they expect you to get your ass kicked."  
  
"Well, thanks for that vote of enthusiasm." She smiled back. "I'm sure they are. I'll just have to do something about that."  
  
Lawson sighed. "I'll go warn Doc that you're about to become a semi- permanent resident again." She couldn't tell whether he was kidding or not.  
  
"Not yet..." Riddick said. "Aren't you all forgetting something?"  
  
They all stared at him. "Um. No. I don't think so." Lawson frowned. "What?"  
  
He smiled. She was sure it wasn't supposed to be a nice smile. "We made a deal. First fight after the unmasking, remember?"  
  
Fantine blinked. She had forgotten about that deal entirely. Not surprising, given the events of the last few months, but she didn't think he'd remembered either. "Riddick... you pick the strangest times to remember shit like that. Are you sure you want to?"  
  
He shrugged. "I'm still curious. Why not?"  
  
"Why not, indeed," Lawson muttered. Joey just threw his fist at the wall and walked out. All three of them stared after him, wondering what the hell had just happened. Lawson shook his head and went off to catch him and ask. "I guess we'll give you two some alone time to figure that part of it out, then."  
  
Three months ago there would have been innuendo in that simple statement. Now it meant exactly what it said. Fantine leaned back on the bunk and closed her eyes, feeling the aching gap in her heart and not knowing what had gone missing there. Riddick sat by her on the bunk but waited for her to speak, patient, watching.


End file.
